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MODERN 
FRENCH    LITERATURE 


MODERN 


FRENCH   LITERATURE 


BY 

BENJAMIN    W.   WELLS,    PH.D.   (HARV.) 


BOSTON 

LITTLE,   BROWN,   AND  COMPANY 
1909 


Copyright,  1896,  1909, 
BY  BENJ.  W.  WELLS. 

All  rights  reserved. 


SEnitoetsttg 
JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON,  CAMBRIDGE,  U.S.A. 


13  W 


PREFACE. 


THIS  book  is  meant  to  serve  as  a  companion,  and 
possibly  a  guide,  to  the  better  appreciation  and  enjoy- 
ment of  those  authors  who  mark  progress  or  change  in 
the  evolution  of  literary  ideals  in  France  since  the 
Ee volution.  Until  any  book  that  is  worth  reading  is 
seen  in  its  true  perspective,  one  will  not  draw  from  it  its 
full  measure  of  pleasure  or  profit.  To  give  some  clew 
to  the  books  that  are  significant,  whether  as  products 
or  as  causes  of  changed  critical  standards  and  aesthetic 
principles,  is  what  is  attempted  in  these  chapters. 

Three  introductory  chapters  sketch  the  evolution  of 
French  literature  till  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, that  the  reader  may  be  reminded  of  those  authors 
whose  influence  is  still  felt  and  of  whom  it  belongs  to 
the  humane  life  to  know.  In  the  more  detailed  studies 
that  follow,  no  mention  is  made  of  imitators  or  hack 
writers,  however  ephemerally  popular,  nor  of  any  work 
that  has  not  literary  imagination  and  artistic  form,  in 
order  that  attention  may  be  concentrated  on  those 
writers  who  stand  for  something,  who  mark  progress 

396685 


VI  PREFACE. 

or  change.  In  estimating  their  place  and  function,  I 
have  used  freely  the  critical  apparatus  cited  in  the 
foot-notes,  but  I  have  never  expressed  a  literary  opinion 
that  is  not  based  on  examination  of  the  original  work, 
though  doubtless  my  position  has  been  modified  by 
the  masters  of  French  criticism,  and,  as  I  have  used  at 
times,  notes  made  long  since  and  for  another  purpose, 
it  is  possible  that  I  have  still  unacknowledged  debts, 
to  avoid  the  possibility  of  which  would  involve  what 
seems  to  me  an  undue  sacrifice. 

This  book  was  first  published  in  1896.  It  has  been 
revised  throughout,  and  considerable  additions  have 
been  made  in  the  later  chapters,  that  new  tendencies, 
new  writers,  and  the  new  work  of  those  that  had  already 

claimed  notice  might  not  fail  of  mention. 

\ 

BENJAMIN  W.  WELLS. 
NEW  YORK, 
May,  1909. 


CONTENTS, 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAGES 
MIDDLE  AGE  AND  RENASCENCE    .    .  * 1-42 

Twelfth  century:  Romances,  lyrics,  and  fabliaux,  1.  Thirteenth 
century :  Lyrics,  drama,  satire,  historical  prose,  6.  Fourteenth 
and  fifteenth  centuries:  Lyrics  and  historic  prose,  11;  The 
Renascence,  17;  Marot,  24;  Ronsard,  27.  Drama,  history, 
and  theology,  31;  Rabelais,  33.  Fiction,  38;  Montaigne,  39. 

CHAPTER  II. 

THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY 43-81 

Poetry:  Malherbe,  43;  Boileau,  48;  La  Fontaine,  50.  Novels,  54. 
Essays,  57.  Philosophy,  57.  Memoirs,  58.  Letters,  60.  Ora- 
tory, 62.  Drama:  Corneille,  65;  Racine,  71;  Moliere,  75; 
Regnard,  80.  Retrospect,  80. 

CHAPTER  III. 

THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY 82-118 

Voltaire,  82.  Lyrics  and  Epics,  90.  Drama:  Le  Sage,  95;  Mari- 
vaux,  96;  Beaumarchais,  99.  History,  101.  Oratory,  103. 
Philosophy,  103.  Criticism,  106.  Fiction:  Le  Sage,  107; 
Marivaux,  109;  Voltaire,  111;  Diderot,  112;  Rousseau,  113. 


yiii  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  IV. 

PAGES 

MADAME  DE  STAEL  AND  CHATEAUBRIAND    ....     119-151 

Literature  under  Bonaparte,  1 19.  Life  and  Character  of  Madame 
de  Stael,  120:  Corinne,  128;  Alleinagne,  129.  Life  and  char- 
acter of  Chateaubriand,  135:  Atala,  142;  Genie  du  chris- 
tianisrne,  143;  Rene,  145;  Martyrs,  147;  Itineraire,  148. 
Chateaubriand's  influence,  148. 

CHAPTER  V. 
THE  ROMANTIC  SCHOOL 152-191 

Sources  and  character  of  Romanticism,  152.  Poetry:  Beranger, 
158;  Lamartine,  159;  De  Vigny,  162;  De  Musset,  165;  Gau- 
tier,  169.  Drama:  Dumas,  176;  De  Vigny,  178;  De  Musset, 
179.  Fiction:  De  Vigny,  181;  De  Musset,  182;  Gautier,  184; 
Dumas,  187.  Decline  of  Romanticism,  191. 

CHAPTER  VI. 
THE  YOUNG  HUGO 192-224 

Early  Lyrics,  198.  Han  d'Islande,  200.  Cromwell,  202.  Orieu- 
tales,  205.  Dramas  from  Hernani  to  Les  Burgraves,  206. 
Notre-Dame,  220.  Second  lyric  period,  221.  Hugo  as  a 
politician,  224. 

CHAPTER  VII. 

HUGO  IN  EXILE  AND  IN  TRIUMPH 225-264 

Biography,  225.  Fiction:  Miserables,  232;  Travailleurs  de  la  mer, 
235;  Quatre-vingt-treize,  236.  Lyric  and  epic  poetry,  237. 
Philosophic  poetry,  253.  Gleanings  and  posthumous  volumes, 
253.  Hugo's  work  reflects  his  mind  in  its  substance  and  its 
form,  256.  His  influence  and  popularity,  260. 


CONTENTS.  ix 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

PAGES 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  HISTORY  AND  CRITICISM    .     .     .    265-302 

Growth  of  the  historic  spirit,  265.  Thierry,  266.  Michelet,  267. 
Development  of  criticism,  272.  Sainte-Beuve,  274.  Taine, 
278.  Renan,  288.  Contemporary  critics,  299. 

CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY 303-352 

The  Parnassians:  Banville,  304;  Lecontede  Lisle,  309;  De  Heredia, 
318;  Coppee,  321;  Sully-Prudhomme,  324.  The  Decadents: 
Baudelaire,  332 ;  Verlaine,  342.  The  Symbolists,  350. 

CHAPTER  X. 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA 353-395 

Scribe,  353  ;  Augier,  356  ;  Dumas  fils,  369  ;  Sardou,  379  ;  Labiche 
and  minor  dramatists.  387  ;  the  Naturalistic  drama,  393  ;  Ros- 
tand and  Maeterlinck,  395. 

CHAPTER   XI. 

MODERN  FICTION. — I.  THE  EVOLUTION  OF  NATURALISM  396-431 

George  Sand,  397;  Henri  Beyle  (Stendhal),  405;  Balzac,  414; 
Merimee,  427. 

CHAPTER  XII. 

MODERN  FICTION.  —  II.  THE  NATURALISTIC  SCHOOL  .  432-463 
Flaubert,  433;  The  Brothers  Goncourt,  440";  Zola,  446  ;  Huysmans, 
457;  Maupassant,  458 ;  Minor  novelists,  463. 


X  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

PAGES 

MODERN  FICTION.  —  III.  THE  WANING  OF  NATURALISM  464-503 

The  Compromisers:  Feuillet,  Cherbuliez,  Fabre,  Theuriet,  464; 
Daudet,  467;  Ohnet,  490.  Minor  novelists,  491.  Exotic  fic- 
tion :  Loti,  492.  The  Psychologists :  Bourget,  494 ;  Barres,  498 ; 
Minor  novelists,  498 ;  Marcel  Provost,  500 ;  Paul  Margneritte, 
501. 


INDEX 505-510 


MODERN    FRENCH    LITERATURE. 


CHAPTEK  I. 

MIDDLE   AGE   AND  EENASCENCE. 

BOOKS  began  to  be  written  in  French  somewhat  later 
than  in  English  or  German,  because  Latin  survived 
longer  in  Gaul  as  the  language  of  the  cultured.  The 
English  and  the  Germans  had  no  classical  past  to  check 
and  discourage  efforts  in  what  might  seem  a  degraded 
dialect ;  and  so,  long  after  Charlemagne  had  made  his 
collection  of  heroic  Teutonic  ballads,  long  after  Eng- 
lish hearts  had  thrilled  to  the  story  of  Beowulf,  French 
was  still  an  unwritten  language,  in  which  the  first 
stammerings  of  literary  expression  had  yet  to  be  heard, 
though  even  in  the  middle  of  the  seventh  century  we 
read  that  a  bishop  of  Noyon  was  chosen  "  because  he 
understood  both  Teutonic  and  Eomance, "  which  would 
show  that  many  that  spoke  either  tongue  understood 
no  other. 

Eomance  is  the  indefinite  designation  of  many  dia- 
lects. What  survived  in  literature  is  essentially  Low 
Latin  with  greatly  maimed  inflections,  much  confusion 
of  vowels  and  elision  of  consonants.  A  few  words 
recall  the  Celtic  that  the  Latin  had  almost  wholly  dis- 
placed in  the  first  century  of  our  era ;  many  more  words 
were  retained  from  their  own  mother  tongue  by  the 

1 


2  MODERN  FKENCH   LITERATURE. 

conquering  Franks.  The  first  to  put  this  new  growth 
to  literary  use  were,  naturally,  the  clergy.  The  clois- 
ters furnished  the  leisure ;  the  needs  of  the  missionaries 
and  devotees,  the  motive.  Already  in  the  tenth  century 
there  were  legends  of  the  saints  and  bits  of  Bible  story 
that  have  much  simple  beauty;  and  when  once  this 
fountain-head  had  been  opened,  it  poured  a  rich  and 
constant  stream  that  has  not  ceased  to  flow  for  eight 
centuries.  There  are  no  such  dreary  wastes  in  French 
literature  as  those  that  separate  Chaucer  from  Spenser, 
or  Luther  from  Lessing.  There  is  hardly  a  generation 
since  the  "  Chanson  de  Eoland  "  that  has  not  had  some 
work  of  real  excellence  to  show ;  and  all  this  literature, 
even  the  oldest,  has  been  readily  and  easily  intelligible. 
No  educated  Frenchman  has  ever  needed  a  long  prepara- 
tion to  assimilate  the  literary  content  of  the  "  Song  of 
Eoland, "  and  so  early  French  literature  has  had  more 
direct  influence  on  the  culture  of  the  last  hundred  years 
than  early  English  has  had.  Surely  no  predecessor  of 
Shakspere  is  so  present  in  the  minds  of  modern  writers 
as  Eabelais  or  Montaigne.  To  indicate  as  briefly  as  pos- 
sible the  relation  of  these  early  centuries  to  our  own,  is 
my  purpose  in  this  chapter. 

The  first  popular  literature  was  metrical,  both  for  the 
convenience  of  the  reciter  who  had  to  memorize  it,  and 
also  to  admit  of  a  musical  accompaniment.  And  since 
the  minstrel  depended  on  the  interest  he  could  evoke, 
he  naturally  chose  the  themes  that  attracted  those 
who  had  most  to  give,  and  were  likely  to  be  most  lav- 
ish in  the  giving.  These  were  the  knights  and  nobles  ; 
and  the  deeds  of  their  chivalrous  ancestors  were  the 
subjects  that  most  effectually  touched  their  pride  and 
loosed  their  purse-strings.  When  he  was  the  guest 
of  a  cloister,  the  singer  might  recount  the  Passion  of 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND   RENASCENCE.  3 

our  Lord,  of  Saint  Eulalie,  or  of  Saint  Alexis,  but  in 
the  castle  his  welcome  depended  on  the  local  character 
of  his  repertory.  Hence  the  groups  of  "  Chansons  de 
geste  "  (Family  Songs)  that,  when  compiled  and  joined 
to  one  another  with  more  or  less  skill,  made  up  the 
greater  part  of  the  literature  of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth 
centuries,  and  continued  to  be  re-edited  and  further  ex- 
tended in  the  thirteenth.  Such  "  Chansons  "  naturally 
served  as  a  model  for  those  who  had  recent  history  to 
record;  and  some  of  these  rhymed  chronicles  —  Wace's 
"  Eoman  de  Eou, "  for  instance  —  have  a  sort  of  literary 
interest. 

About  a  hundred  of  these  epic  songs  have  survived 
the  rack  of  time.  The  most  famous  of  them  all  is  the 
story  of  Eoland's  death  at  Roncesvalles  (August  15, 
778),  which  indeed  no  other  chanson  resembles  or 
approaches  in  naive  realism  and  rugged  beauty.1  All 
of  them  are  written  in  couplets  of  careful  structure, 
united  by  assonance  or  vowel  rhyme.  The  hero  is 
usually,  as  in  Eoland's  case,  connected  with  Charle- 
magne, and  with  the  struggles  of  Christians  and  infi- 
dels; but  there  is  always  fighting  of  some  kind,  and 
women  play  a  very  subordinate  part.  Love  is  over- 
laid by  the  stronger  emotions  of  faith  and  patriotism 
in  the  "  Song  of  Eoland, "  and  by  the  mere  love  of 
brawling  in  some  of  the  inferior  "  Chansons, "  which 
differ  greatly  in  this  from  the  freer  inventions  that 
were  gradually  developed  from  them  as  literature  and 
culture  progressed.  Legends  of  the  British  King 
Arthur  had  attracted  the  Normans  in  England,  and 
were  by  them  brought  to  France,  where  most  of  them 
had  been  versified  before  the  end  of  the  twelfth  cen- 

1  Cp.  Lanson,  Litterature  fran9aise,  p.  26.  Cited  hereafter  as 
Lanson. 


4  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

tury,  mainly  by  Chrestien  de  Troyes,  to  whom,  in 
turn,  England  owes  the  "  Morte  d' Arthur,"  and  Ger- 
many the  epics  of  Hartmann,  Wolfram,  and  Gottfried. 

These  romances,  when  contrasted  with  the  "  Chan- 
sons, "  show  a  growing  culture  and  refinement,  a  more 
developed  courtesy,  and  so  a  more  prominent  position 
for  women,  as  was  natural  on  the  eve  of  the  "  age  of 
chivalry."  Idealization  shows  itself  also  in  the  reli- 
gious background,  which  in  the  grail  saga  becomes 
very  prominent  and  mystical.  Then,  too,  the  form 
shows  more  refinement.  Assonance  is  succeeded  by 
true  rhyme.  But  what  is  more  significant  is  the  appeal 
to  a  wider  public.  Tradespeople  and  bourgeois  begin 
to  find  a  place  in  the  stories,  —  characters  that  would 
have  had  no  interest  for  the  public  of  the  "  Chansons,  " 
to  whom  no  minstrel  would  have  ventured  to  intro- 
duce them. 

The  "  Chansons  de  geste  "  had  been  national,  if  not 
local,  in  tone,  and  the  romances  were  essentially  in 
accord  with  the  mediaeval  spirit;  the  next  stage  of 
development,  however,  was  more  purely  artificial. 
Thirst  for  novelty,  aided  by  the  demands  of  the  mo- 
nastic schools,  led  to  translations  and  adaptations  of 
classical  subjects,  especially  the  legends  of  Alexander, 
to  one  of  which  in  twelve-syllable  lines  we  owe  the 
alexandrine  verse  that  was  destined  to  play  a  great 
part  in  the  French  prosody  of  many  following  centu- 
ries. Nature,  too,  begins  to  interest ;  and  "  Bestiaries, " 
true  "  fairy  tales  of  science, "  such  as  that  age  knew, 
tell  of  the  strange  virtues  and  habits  of  animals,  while 
other  didactic  poems  recount  similar  traits  of  plants 
and  stones.  Lyric  poetry  now  begins  to  be  cultivated 
by  the  aristocracy.  Troubadours  in  the  south  and 
Trouveres  in  the  north  write  "  Komances  "  and  "  Pastou- 


MIDDLE   AGE  AND  RENASCENCE.  5 

relies, "  dealing  always  with  ladies  and  shepherdesses, 
nearly  always  with  love,  usually  of  a  rather  facile 
character.  Meanwhile  the  true,  urisanctified  esprit 
gaulois  was  revealing  itself  in  "  Fabliaux,  "  —  short 
stories  in  verse,  frankly  coarse,  and  often  brutal, 
usually  comic  and  satirical,  often  cynically  skeptical 
of  virtue  and  with  touches  of  what  modern  Frenchmen 
call  Hague.  These  tales  were  written  by  men,  and 
they  are  not  tender  to  feminine  foibles.  No  doubt 
they  give  too  dark  a  picture  of  the  national  morals; 
but  they  are  essentially  realistic  stories  of  every -day 
life,  in  strong  contrast  with  the  artificial  "  Pastou- 
relles.  "  They  were  to  the  middle  and  lower  classes  as 
natural  as  the  "  Chansons  de  geste  "  to  the  knights. 
Hei.^o  they  had  in  them  fruitful  seeds  of  life,  and 
exercised  a  great  and  lasting  influence.  They  were  so 
true  to  unspiritualized  human  nature  that  they  needed 
little  to  adapt  them  to  any  age  or  environment.  So 
the  "  Fabliaux  "  have  been  a  storehouse  whence  the 
novelists  and  dramatists  of  later  times  have  drawn 
some  of  their  best  material.  The  debt  of  Boccaccio,  of 
De  la  Salle,  of  Chaucer,  Shakspere,  and  Moliere  to  the 
old  French  "  Fabliaux  "  shows  that  human  nature  does 
not  greatly  change  in  crossing  the  Alps  or  the  Channel, 
nor  yet  from  century  to  century. 

From  the  "  Fabliaux  "  to  the  drama  might  seem  a 
natural  transition,  for  many  of  them  were  in  dialogue. 
But  here  the  initiative  came  from  the  -effort  of  the 
clergy  to  make  the  Scripture  story  more  real  to  the 
unlettered  multitude  than  painting  or  sculpture  could 
have  done.  "  Miracle  Plays  "  were  already  acted  in 
French  before  the  close  of  the  twelfth  century;  but 
they  have  hardly  a  trace  of  literary  merit,  such  as 
would  entitle  them  to  rank  with  the  epics  and  lyrics 


6  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

of  the  time.  The  thirteenth  century,  however,  was 
to  produce  in  all  these  fields  the  best  that  mediaeval 
literature  has  to  offer,  here  as  in  Germany ;  and  it 
is  interesting  to  note  that  in  both  countries  this  re- 
markable age  was  followed  by  a  stationary  if  not 
retrogressive  one. 

Narrative  verse  in  the  thirteenth  century,  though 
abundant,  shows  little  invention  of  new  subjects.  The 
tales  of  chivalrous  adventure  develop  the  old  themes, 
with  classical  reminiscences  in  the  spirit  of  free  fancy 
and  romantic  fiction,  with  less  energy  but  more  grace 
and  beauty.  And  beside  this  survival  there  rises  the 
prose  tale,  drawing  its  inspiration  through  Greece  by 
the  attrition  of  the  Crusades,  as  well  as  from  the  Latin 
and  the  older  French  epics,  which  it  first  equals  and 
then  surpasses  both  in  bulk  and  interest.  This  indi- 
cates that  while  there  was  still  an  audience  for  the 
minstrel,  a  reading  public  was  growing  that  would 
presently  make  him  superfluous  as  a  narrator  and 
change  him  to  a  singer  of  songs. 

There  is  a  pretence  of  didactic  purpose  in  most  of  the 
translated  tales  of  the  "  Gesta  Romanorum "  and  in 
the  oriental  "  Seven  Wise  Masters ; "  but  original 
didactic  writing  is  usually  in  versified  fables,  in 
Aesop's  manner;  and  in  the  hands  of  Marie  de  France 
these  attain  at  the  outset  a  remarkable  grace  and 
pathos,  though  the  best  work  of  this  genial  lady  is  in 
the  lais,  — short  narrative  lyrics,  perhaps  the  most 
original  poems  of  the  century.  The  songs  of  Thibaut 
of  Champagne  are  also  very  delicate  and  beautiful. 
Both  poets  belong  to  the  high  aristocracy  and  to  the 
earlier  half  of  the  century,  and  their  numerous  imita- 
tors were  thoroughly  aristocratic  both  in  their  lives 
and  work.  The  close  of  the  century  shows,  however, 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND   RENASCENCE.  7 

a  marked  shifting  of  the  centre  of  production.  Its 
chief  authors,  Kutebceuf  and  Adam  de  la  Halle,  belong, 
by  birth  and  instinct,  to  the  people,  and  give  a  dis- 
tinctly democratic  tone  to  the  drama  and  to  social 
and  political  satire. 

The  former  is  a  typical  Parisian  bourgeois  of  the 
period,  whom  poverty  compelled  to  turn  his  hand  to 
hack-work  of  almost  every  kind,  —  panegyrics,  lives  of 
saints  and  miracle  plays,  fabliaux,  and  crusading 
songs,  — but  who  avenged  himself  in  days  of  compara- 
tive ease  by  satirical  attacks  on  his  taskmasters,  chiefly 
the  clergy  and  the  monks.  Some  of  these,  especially 
the  autobiographical  "  Marriage  "  and  "  Complaint, " 
have  still  pungency  enough  to  insure  their  life.  But 
while  Ruteboeuf  was  advancing  literature  on  various 
lines,  his  contemporary,  Adam  de  la  Halle,  was  so 
broadening  the  French  drama  that  he  almost  seems  its 
creator.  He  carried  it  beyond  the  religious  sphere. 
He  took  both  his  scenes  and  his  characters  from  the 
life  of  his  own  day  and  of  his  native  Arras,  and  so 
"  Le  Jeu  de  la  feuille'e  "  (c.  1262)  is  the  first  French 
comedy  of  manners.  Nor  was  this  his  only  happy  hit. 
In  "  Eobin  and  Marion  "  he  was  first  to  turn  the  "  Pas- 
tourelle  "  into  light  opera.  The  invention  of  these  two 
genres  make  the  century  memorable  in  French  dramatic 
history,  though  the  plays  themselves  may  seem  jejune 
enough  to  a  modern  reader. 

Meantime  the  fable,  under  the  same  democratic 
impulse,  had  developed  from  the  apologue  to  the 
epopee  in  "  Kenard  the  Fox, "  whose  protean  forms  attest 
its  popularity  throughout  the  Middle  Ages.1  Here 
are  told,  with  obvious  sympathy,  the  tricks  by  which 

1  The  original  source  seems  to  have  been  Flanders.  See  Lanson, 
p.  89. 


8  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

the  Fox  outwits  the  authority  of  the  Lion,  the  strength 
of  the  Bear,  and  the  envy  of  lesser  enemies.  It  thus 
lends  itself  easily  to  the  freest  social  and  political 
satire,  of  which  the  moral  basis,  like  that  of  the 
"  Fabliaux, "  is  cynical  skepticism  that  mocks  honor, 
duty,  loyalty,  and  has  unqualified  admiration  for 
worldly  shrewdness.  The  scheme  admitted  an  indefi- 
nite addition  of  new  episodes,  until  at  last  this 
product  of  many  authors  and  several  generations  reached 
the  huge  bulk  of  thirty  thousand  lines,  and  seemed 
likely  to  die  of  its  own  hypertrophy,  even  while  eager 
imitators  were  composing  new  poems  on  its  model. 

The  obvious  danger  of  satirical  allegory  is  artificial 
elaboration  that  makes  it  both  unintelligible  and 
wearisome.  This  is  the  fault  of  "  Eenard, "  and  in  a 
still  greater  degree  of  the  "  Eomance  of  the  Eose, "  —  a 
more  brilliant  poem  of  nearly  equal  length,  in  which 
the  Middle  Ages  found  an  exhaustless  mine  of  mi- 
sogynist irony.  The  wit  is  of  the  keenest,  but  the 
allegory  is  too  fine  spun ;  and  delightful  as  the  poem  is 
in  parts,  few  will  have  the  patience  to  unravel  its 
tangled  plot,  in  this  age  that  cannot  digest  the  "  Faerie 
Queene. "  But  in  its  day  its  fame  was  very  great ;  it 
claimed  a  translation  from  Chaucer,  and  some  knowl- 
edge of  its  character  belongs  even  to  general  literary 
culture. 

"  The  Eomancfe  of  the  Eose"  is  not  a  homogeneous 
work.  Gruillaume  de  Loris  began  it  in  the  aristocratic 
part  of  the  century ;  Jean  de  Meung  finished  it  in  the 
wholly  different  democratic  spirit  that  marked  Adam 
and  Euteboeuf.  The  former  planned  a  scholarly  alle- 
gory of  the  Eose  of  beauty  guarded  by  the  virtues  from 
the  vices  and  from  the  Lover,  whom  some  assist  and 
others  hinder  in  his  effort  to  pluck  and  bear  her  from 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND   RENASCENCE.  9 

the  well -defended  garden.  Guillaume  is  often  truly 
poetic  and  occasionally  realistic,  yet  there  is  small 
trace  in  these  pretty  conceits  of  anything  but  serious 
moralizing.  But  when  Jean  took  up  the  parable,  in  a 
continuation  some  four  times  the  length  of  the  original, 
he  maintained,  indeed,  the  essential  thread  of  the 
allegory,  but  allowed  himself  the  freest  scope  for  the 
display  of  a  varied  reading  and  wide  learning,  and  for 
satirical  digressions  that  enter  nearly  every  field  of 
what  was  then  current  in  science  and  speculation,  in 
philosophy,  physics,  and  theology.  These  give  the 
poem  its  chief  interest  to-day,  though  to  the  student 
of  mediaeval  manners  it  offers  pictures  that  would  be 
sought  in  vain  elsewhere,  and  in  its  peculiar  vein  it 
has  probably  never  been  equalled.  Jean  de  Meung 
was  the  first  popularizer  of  rationalism,  of  Nature  as 
the  guide  of  life.  He  is  the  true  predecessor  of  Kabe- 
lais,  of  Montaigne,  and  of  Voltaire;  and  though  he 
never  ceased  to  imagine  himself  a  devout  Catholic,  he 
is  essentially  Protestant  at  heart.  Nature,  to  him,  is 
the  source  of  beauty;  to  live  according  to  Nature  is 
true  morality.  If  he  appears  sometimes  crude  and 
even  cynical  in  his  judgments  of  those  who  seem  most 
to  contradict  Nature,  the  monks  and  women,  he  is  in 
the  main  a  severe  moralist ;  and  though  his  work  is  a 
strange  and  ill-ordered  medley,  he  is  surely  the  most 
original  thinker  who  wrote  in  French  before  the 
Eenaissance. 

The  historical  prose  of  the  thirteenth  century  is 
probably  more  read  than  any  of  its  purely  literary 
productions,  perhaps  because  both  Villehardouin  at 
the  beginning  and  Joinville  at  the  close  of  this  period 
were  closer  students  of  real  life  than  the  poets.  Ville- 
hardouin writes  what  might  pass  for  a  prose  chanson  de 


10  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

geste  if  it  were  not  known  to  be  the  account  of  a  sober 
eyewitness  of  the  Fourth  Crusade,  or,  as  he  more 
justly  calls  it,  of  the  Conquest  of  Constantinople,  —  for 
Christians,  not  Saracens,  were  its  victims.  No  account 
of  this  mad  adventure  could  lack  a  spice  of  romance ; 
but  Villehardouin  put  into  it  all  the  childlike  naivetd 
of  his  time,  all  the  energy  of  a  man  of  action,  all  the 
piety  of  the  ages  of  faith,  all  the  enthusiasm  that  par- 
ticipation-in  a  great  task  could  inspire  in  a  generous 
soul.  Thus  his  Chronicle,  as  Saintsbury  has  said, 
gives  a  better  idea  of  chivalry  and  feudalism  at  their 
best,  than  any  other  single  work.  It  mirrors  the  life 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  as  the  "  Eomance  of  the  Eose  "  does 
its  thought.  It  has  much  of  the  charm  of  Froissart, 
and  will  never  seem  old  so  long  as  hearts  are  young. 

During  the  century  others  continued  the  tradition, 
though  they  did  not  attain  the  excellence  of  the  Cru- 
sader, and  toward  its  close  the  monks  of  St.  Denis  be- 
gan to  compile  their  official  history  in  French ;  but  that 
was  not  literature.  On  the  other  hand,  Joinville's  biog- 
raphy of  his  friend  and  master,  Louis  IX.  the  Saint, 
has  a  peculiar  grace  and  charm  that  six  centuries  have 
not  made  to  fade.  Louis  died  in  1270,  but  Joinville 
wrote  a  generation  later  in  advanced  old  age.  The 
century  that  separates  him  from  Villehardouin  was,  as 
we  have  seen,  one  of  disillusionment;  sentiment  was 
yielding  to  satire,  and  this  was  reflected  in  history  as 
it  had  been  in  the  epic  and  lyric  poetry.  Joinville  is 
more  reflective,  more  inquisitive  too.  He  is  a  little 
skeptical  about  the  merit  of  fighting  for  fighting's  sake, 
and  has  his  doubts  about  the  value  of  knight-errantry. 
There  is  a  great  deal  of  keen  though  playful  satire 
in  the  anecdotes  that  he  recalls  of  the  good  king.  It 
seems  as  though  the  same  moral  lassitude  which  in 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND   RENASCENCE.  11 

Germany  had  followed  the  collapse  of  Frederic  II.  's 
efforts  for  the  emancipation  of  the  human  mind,  the 
discouraged  consciousness  of  the  failure  of  the  Cru- 
sades, and  the  growing  weight  of  the  ecclesiastical  yoke, 
had  here  the  same  effect  that  it  was  having  in  the 
Empire,  driving  men  to  a  critical,  questioning  spirit, 
to  thoughts  they  were  fain  to  veil  in  allegory  and 
satire.  And  Joinville's  work  is  interesting  also  from 
a  rhetorical  side.  In  him  French  prose  proved  its 
fitness  for  literary  use.  It  was  no  longer  an  experi- 
ment, and  it  is  essentially  on  the  lines  of  his  style 
that  it  grew  and  perfected  itself. 

Indeed,  so  long  as  the  mediaeval  spirit  continued, 
so  long  as  education  and  especially  classical  culture 
was  confined  to  the  few,  till  the  minds  of  men  were 
enlarged  and  their  horizons  broadened,  no  radical 
change  could  be  expected  in  literature.  The  French 
had  already  expressed  their  tender  feelings  in  lyrics, 
their  heroic  aspirations  in  chansons,  their  life  in  the 
chronicles,  their  social  views  in  satires.  They  were 
restless,  questioning,  expectant.  Under  these  condi- 
tions an  arrested  literary  development  is  almost  inevi- 
table. There  might  be  no  decline.  Good  work  might 
continue  to  be  done  on  the  old  lines ;  but  presently  the 
disillusionment  spread  and  deepened.  They  felt  that  the 
old  social  system  was  cracking.  It  took  no  prophet  to 
see  that  feudalism  was  doomed.  But  a  new  literature 
could  arise  only  with  a  new  enthusiasm ;  and  that 
enthusiasm  came  after  two  centuries  of  expectation 
from  the  inspiring  breath  of  Italian  culture  and  the 
classical  Renaissance. 

In  poetry  this  intervening  period  counts  the  notable 
names  of  Charles  d'Orle'ans  and  Fransois  Villon 1  in 

1  Orleans,  b.  1391,  d.  1465.     Villon,  b.  1431,  d.  about  1463. 


12  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

a  numerous  company,  whose  ingenuity  was  exercised 
less  over  matter  than  form.  It  has  been  said  that 
"  their  poetry  was  all  technique,  and  all  their  tech- 
nique was  difficulty.  "  They  invented  a  great  number 
of  metrical  arrangements,  more  or  less  artificial,  such 
as  the  ballade,  with  its  equivocal  and  retrograde  vari- 
ations, the  rondeau,  rondel,  triolet,  virelay,  and  the 
chanson  royal,1  which  some  English  poets  are  exer- 
cising their  skill  to  imitate  to-day,  so  that  these  men 
enjoy  a  sort  of  esoteric  cult  and  some  real  revival  of 
popularity.  For  no  one  can  read  D 'Orleans'  graceful, 
nonchalant  verses  without  delight,  though  their  ethical 
value  is  of  the  slightest,  and  the  fickle  muse  surely 
deserts  him  if  ever  he  presumes  to  be  serious.  Bitter 
experience  of  the  uncertainties  of  politics  had  made 
him  pay  for  the  honor  of  a  high  command  at  Agincourt 
with  a  long  imprisonment  in  England,  whence  he  re- 
turned a  devoted  disciple  of  the  god  Nonchaloir,  and 
felt  no  more  pressing  duty  than  to  set  up  a  poetic  court 
at  Blois,  where  the  best  talent  of  the  age  was  soon 
assembled.  As  "  an  idle  singer  of  an  empty  day, "  he 
had  quite  peculiar  gifts.  His  favorite  subjects  are  the 
changing  seasons  and  light-hearted  lover's  fancies,  with 
counsels  against  melancholy  and  care,  and  exhortations 
to  friendship  and  good-humor.  D 'Orleans  is  never 
great,  but  he  is  nearly  always  healthy  and  cheerful. 

The  Parisian  Villon  strikes  a  deeper  note.  He  was 
a  greater  and  a  more  original  poet,  though  a  less  worthy 
man.  Poor  as  Euteboeuf,  he  was  even  more  of  a 
reckless  vagabond ;  and  his  best  work,  like  his  prede- 
cessor's, was  in  satires,  — his  "  Testaments,"  in  which 
he  made  mock  bequests  to  various  friends  and  enemies, 
with  autobiographical  details  and  allusions  that  are 

1  These  metrical  forms  are  briefly  described  in  Lanson,  p.  142,  note. 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND   RENASCENCE.  13 

interesting  whenever  they  happen  tg  be  still  intelli- 
gible. The  chief  attraction  of  Villon  to-day,  however, 
is  the  short  poems  interspersed  in  these  long  satires, 
some  of  which  bid  fair  to  maintain  their  place  among 
the  best  lyrics  of  the  world.  The  "  Ballad  of  the 
Ladies  of  Long-Ago, "  with  its  refrain,  "  But  where  are 
last  year's  snows, "  l  is  familiar  to  all  lovers  of  poetry. 
Almost  as  famous  is  the  "  Epitaph  in  the  form  of  a 
Ballad  which  Villon  wrote  for  himself  and  his  Compan- 
ions when  expecting  to  be  hung  with  them.  "  In  this 
poem  of  death  there  is  an  antinomy  of  grim  humor  and 
naive  pathos  that  can  hardly  be  excelled.  But  though 
in  our  own  day  Villon  has  been  called  "  the  first 
French  writer  who  is  frankly  and  completely  modern, " 
he  will  always  be  the  poet  of  the  few,  the  poets'  poet, 
and  "  caviare  to  the  general.  "  After  his  death  French 
poets  grew  steadily  more  artificial,  endeavoring  to  atone 
by  self-imposed  restraints  for  the  lack  of  genius  to  rise 
above  them,  precisely  as  the  Mastersingers  were  doing 
in  contemporary  Germany,  and  with  much  the  same 
result. 

Meantime,  in  the  drama,  the  brilliant  innovations  of 
Adam  de  la  Halle  remained  unfruitful  for  a  time,  while 
the  Miracle  Play  was  developing  into  the  Mystery, 
where  a  freer  use  of  allegory  and  mythology  fostered 
originality  and  encouraged  associations  of  actors  inde- 
pendent of  the  clergy,  or  at  least  apart  from  them.  Such 
companies  were  quicker  to  anticipate  or  respond  to  pop- 
ular demands ;  and  in  the  fifteenth  century  they  pre- 
sented not  only  the  "  Fall  of  Troy, "  but  the  very  recent 
siege  of  Orleans,  and  the  national  heroine  Joan  of  Arc, 
whose  ashes  were  hardly  cold.  But  the  esprit  gaulois  has 

1  Mais  ou  sont  les  neiges  d'antan  (Ballade  des  dames  du  temps 
jadis). 


14  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

a  natural  affinity  for  comedy,  and  this  century  revived 
also  Adam's  happy  inspiration  in  its  moral  allegories, 
farces,  and  soties.  The  'first  are  the  most  artificial,  and 
their  vogue  may  well  seem  remarkable  to  a  modern 
reader.  "  La  Condemnation  du  banquet  "  is  perhaps 
the  best,  yet  it  is  but  a  wearisome  girding  at  "  Glut- 
tony," who  has  for  his  interlocutors  such  dramatis 
personce  as  "Dinner,"  "Supper,"  "Pastime,"  "Good- 
Company,  "  "  I-Drink-to-You, "  as  well  as  various 
diseases  and  medical  appliances,  and  a  chorus  to  ob- 
trude the  obvious  moral.  The  soties  and  farces  are  far 
more  interesting.  Some  of  them  are  comic  monologues, 
and  occasionally  they  look  like  parodies  on  the  ser- 
mons of  the  time,  which  themselves  are  often  hardly 
more  than  parodies,  as  one  may  see  in  the  famous  dis- 
courses of  the  Viennese  Abraham  a  Sancta -Clara.  But 
the  larger  part  are  realistic  scenes  of  middle  and  low 
life,  full  of  action  and  often  of  brutal  buffoonery  such 
as  would  appeal  to  the  not  very  delicate  taste  of  the 
populace.  Their  spirit,  like  that  of  the  older  fabliaux, 
is  one  of  social  distrust,  of  shrewdness  and  trickery. 
Charity  and  gentleness  are  mocked,  astuteness  is  ad- 
mired. Each  man  lives  in  dread  of  being  duped  by 
his  neighbor.  But  we  have  a  Frenchman's  testimony 
that  this  is  "  the  lower  type  of  the  French  nature  in  its 
pure  vulgarity. "  a 

Some  of  these  little  farces  and  jests  are  so  short  that 
they  seem  meant  to  precede  or  follow  a  more  serious 
performance.  Others  are  long  enough  for  independent 
production,  and  have  no  small  comic  verve.  "  Le 
Cuvier, "  for  instance,  shows  as  much  dramatic  spirit 
as  the  best  of  the  old  fabliaux.  A  yet  more  noted 
mediaeval  farce  is  the  ;<  Maitre  Pathelin"  (1470), 

1  Lanson,  p.  214. 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND   RENASCENCE.  15 

which,  in  the  seventeenth  century,  was  worked  over 
into  a  regular  comedy  that  owed  its  success  almost 
wholly  to  the  vis  comica  of  the  original ;  and  two 
sequels  in  the  fifteenth  century  attest  its  popularity 
without  equalling  its  merits. 

All  of  these  plays  were  written  in  verse,  chiefly  for 
the  benefit  of  the  actors  who  memorized  them,  but  also 
in  deference  to  tradition.  Except  in  outward  form, 
however,  they  are  essentially  prosaic,  and  must  have 
gained  little  but  monotony  from  their  couplets  and 
long  succession  of  octosyllabic  lines.  Yet  the  force  of 
this  custom  has  continued  almost  to  our  own  day, 
though  the  suppler  alexandrine  has  given  some  measure 
of  relief  to  comedy  and  added  stateliness  to  the  classic 
tragedy. 

The  number  of  farces  that  remain  is  very  great,  and 
doubtless  as  many  have  perished.  With  them  comedy 
is  fairly  launched,  and  has  never  since  ceased  to  be  one 
of  the  most  popular  and  important  forms  of  French 
literature.  Meantime  the  prose  that  would  have  been 
in  place  here,  takes  in  Froissart  complete  possession  of 
the  historical  field,  where  Joinville  had  won  only 
toleration.  This  courtier  and  diplomat  of  the  later 
fourteenth  century  (1337-1410),  who  witnessed  much 
of  the  Hundred  Years'  War,  and  busily  inquired  of 
all  he  did  not  see,  was  able  to  draw  a  picture  of  the 
conflict  between  France  and  England  that  became  at 
once  immensely  popular,  and  has  continued  to  delight 
boyhood  and  old  age  ever  since  for  its  vivid  pictur- 
esqueness  of  description  and  its  enthusiastic  chivalry 
of  sentiment.  Froissart  is  not  a  meticulously  accurate 
historian,  still  less  a  social  philosopher;  but  for  a 
battle,  or  a  pageant,  or  a  tragic  scene  like  the  surren- 
der of  Calais,  it  will  be  hard  to  match  him  in  French 


16  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

or,  indeed,  in  any  literature.  None  ever  equalled  his 
brilliant  and  sympathetic  picture  of  chivalry,  with  all 
its  high-hearted  ideals  and  all  its  disdain  of  the  mass 
of  humanity.  For  Froissart  the  common  people  hardly 
exist.  But  the  times  were  even  then  changing,  and  a 
keen  though  untrained  interest  in  the  condition  of  the 
masses  is  attested  by  the  minute  curiosity  of  Juvenal 
des  Ursins  and  Jean  de  Troyes,  who  wrote,  somewhat 
later  than  Froissart,  the  former  of  the  mad  Charles  VI. , 
the  latter  of  the  shrewd  diplomat  Louis  XL  and  his 
scandalous  court,  that  were  to  furnish  to  Philippe  de 
Commynes  the  subject  of  the  Memoirs  by  which  he  in- 
augurated diplomatic  history. 

But  perhaps  the  most  important  contributor  to  the 
literary  prose  of  this  century  was  Antoine  de  la  Salie, 
author  of  the  graceful  "  Petit  Jean  de  Saintre,"  of  the 
biting  "  Quinze  joies  du  mariage, "  and  of  the  brilliant 
"  Cent  nouvelles  nouvelles.  "  "  Petit  Jean  "  is  a  pretty 
story  of  chivalrous  love,  a  pure  bit  of  romantic  imagi- 
nation ;  for  ere  this  Louis  XL  had  made  chivalry  a 
thing  of  the  past  in  France.  The  "  Fifteen  Joys, "  as 
its  name  implies,  is  a  satire  on  women,  as  bright  and 
as  unjust  as  the  "  Komance  of  the  Eose, "  but,  unlike 
that  famous  poem,  of  far  more  than  antiquarian  in- 
terest, for  it  is  still  popular  in  cheap  editions  on  the 
Paris  book-stalls.  Each  of  the  "  Joys"  tells  of  some 
ill-assorted  match,  and  each  chapter  ends  with  the 
misery  that  will  come  of  it  to  the  husband  who  "  shall 
end  miserably  his  days. "  The  poor  fellow  is  either 
led  by  the  nose,  or  plundered  of  his  goods,  or  made  a 
laughing-stock  to  his  friends.  Some  of  the  character- 
sketches  are  very  lively  and  dramatic  in  form,  and  they 
are  well  worth  reading,  in  spite  of  their  archaic  flavor, 
as  specimens  of  early  Eenaissance  literature  and  wit. 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND  EENASCENCE.  17 

But  Antoine  de  la  Salle's  great  work  is  the  "  Cent 
nouvelles  nouvelles, "  —  a  collection  of  tales  gathered, 
it  was  said,  from  the  lips  of  Prince  Louis  and  his 
courtiers  while  he  was  in  Burgundy  under  the  protec- 
tion of  Duke  Philippe,  another  lover  of  the  esprit 
gaulois.  But  neither  the  future  Louis  XI.  nor  his 
courtiers  were  the  inventors  of  the  best  of  these  tales, 
many  of  them  quite  too  good  to  be  new.  They  are 
drawn  in  part  from  old  fabliaux,  in  part  from  Italian 
and  Latin  collections.  But,  as  with  Chaucer  and 
Shakspere,  it  is  not  in  the  substance  but  in  the  treat- 
ment that  De  la  Salle's  individuality  lies,  and  here  his 
merit  is  very  great.  There  had  been  good  naive  prose 
in  Villehardouin,  in  Joinville,  and  in  Froissart,  but 
De  la  Salle  is  the  first  prose  artist  who  takes  an  interest 
in  his  art.  His  work  shows  growing  artistic  sense  and 
power.  Some  of  the  "  Hundred  New  Tales  "  are  really 
polished,  and  it  added  to  their  effect  that  they  appealed 
to  a  much  wider  circle  than  any  other  form  of  writing 
would  have  done.  If  at  times  they  have  a  frankness 
of  speech  that  does  not  accord  with  squeamish  man- 
ners, their  humor  on  the  whole  is  sound  and  healthy, 
and  nearly  always  true  to  human  nature,  superior  in 
this  regard  to  Boccaccio's  "  Decamerone, "  though  yield- 
ing of  course  to  that  masterpiece  in  grace  of  style.  It 
may  be  remarked  that  De  la  Salle's  efforts  for  French 
prose  were  ably  seconded  by  the  homilists  of  the  time, 
whose  sermons  reached  another  class,  and  so  carried 
the  same  seed  to  other  fields. 

And  now  we  are  on  the  eve  of  that  wonderful  and 
cardinal  epoch  in  the  history  of  the  French  and  indeed 
of  the  European  mind,  the  Kenaissance.  *  That  all 

1  The  remainder  of  this  chapter  first  appeared  in  "  The  Sewanee 
Review/'  as  did  also  parts  of  chapters  II,  III,  VIII,  and  IX. 


18  MODERN   FKENCH   LITERATURE. 

literature,  and  indeed  all  forms  of  national  life,  are 
processes  of  evolution,  is  a  truth  now  almost  univer- 
sally recognized  among  critics  worthy  of  the  name; 
but  there  are  periods  when  external  influences  seem 
to  a  superficial  observer  to  interrupt  the  continuity  of 
development,  when  changes  are  more  rapid  and  more 
radical  than  at  others ;  and  from  this  point  of  view  the 
sixteenth  century  is  absolutely  unique  in  French  litera- 
ture. For  however  varied  the  expression  of  that  age 
may  be,  protestant,  pagan,  humanistic,  there  is  in  it 
no  place  and  no  representative  for  the  manner  or  the 
matter  of  mediaeval  literature.  Calvin,  Eabelais,  and 
Eonsard  drew  all  of  them  their  inspiration  from  antiq- 
uity, all  of  them  were  practically  ready  to  make  a 
tabula  rasa  of  the  centuries  that  separate  Augustine 
from  Boccaccio,  but  each  went  to  antiquity  with  a  differ- 
ent mind,  and  drew  from  it  a  different  lesson.  Calvin 
seeks  primitive  Christianity ;  Eabelais  Greek  natural- 
ism ;  Montaigne  the  skeptical  and  practical  realism  of 
Eome ;  Eonsard  turns  with  a  passionate  longing  to  the 
sun  of  classic  art. 

So  we  have  to  follow  out,  in  this  century  and  in 
those  that  succeed,  three  main  tendencies,  not  indeed 
without  subdivisions  and  intertwinings,  for  literary 
psychology  is  not  a  geometric  science,  and  a  strict 
classification  attains  clearness  only  by  inaccuracy ;  but 
still  as  elements  sufficiently  distinct  from  one  another 
to  make  it  profitable  to  ask  in  every  case  in  what  pro- 
portion they  enter  into  each  great  writer's  work  and 
genius.  There  is  first  the  temper  that  recoils  from  the 
abuses  of  the  Church  and  from  what  it  regards  as  the 
accretions  of  mediaeval  ethics,  and  seeks  to  restore  from 
the  Bible,  and  the  Fathers  that  suit  their  purpose,  a 
"  primitive  Christianity  "  to  their  mind.  These  are 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND   KENASCENCE.  19 

the  Protestants,  the  Huguenots,  sober,  serious,  earnest, 
religious  men,  whom  France  will  miss  from  her  intel- 
lectual and  still  more  from  her  moral  life,  when  she 
has  persecuted  and  banished  them.  Uncomfortable, 
intransigent,  morose  sometimes  and  bitter  like  our 
own  Puritans,  but,  after  all,  the  moral  salt  of  the 
earth,  whom  perhaps  one  would  not  like  to  be  one's 
self,  but  whom  one  is  quite  proud  to  have  had  for  an 
ancestor.  Then  there  are  the  Gallios,  —  men  who  see 
that  there  is  something  rotten  in  the  Church  of  their 
fathers,  but  do  not  think  that  they  were  born  to  set  it 
right;  men  who  love  ease,  beauty,  grace,  and  have  a 
sort  of  dilettante  joy  of  life.  These  are  the  human- 
ists, who  toy  with  Theocritus  and  Horace,  are  fasci- 
nated with  Anacreon,  and  have  a  more  distant  admira- 
tion for  the  truly  popular  epic  of  Homer  than  for  the 
courtly  epic  of  Virgil,  but  who  see  in  it  all  a  play  of 
fancy,  not  a  philosophy  of  life.  And  finally  there  are 
the  neo-pagans,  who  find  in  the  bankruptcy  of  medise- 
valism  the  bankruptcy  of  Christianity,  who  think  to 
have  done  at  once  with  Saint  Augustine  and  with  Saint 
Thomas  Aquinas,  whose  ambition  is  a  naive  hedonism 
more  easy  to  their  age  than  to  ours,  who  find  the  old 
Church  more  tolerant  than  the  new,  and  so  remain  as 
a  rule  nominally  Catholic,  and  are  seldom  called  upon 
to  suffer  more  than  temporary  inconvenience  for  their 
thinly  masked  heresies. 

The  causes  of  this  sudden  outburst  of  independent 
thought  were  numerous,  and  have  been  often  indicated. 
The  discovery  of  America,  and,  still  more,  the  dis- 
covery of  the  solar  system,  had  changed  man's  point  of 
view  of  his  place  in  Nature.  As  Faguet1  observes, 
"  The  narrow  world  of  the  middle  ages,  with  its  sky 

1  Seizieme  siecle,  Avant-propos,  p.  vii. 


20  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

very  low  and  its  God  very  close,  disappeared  almost 
suddenly.  We  were  living  in  a  little  low  house,  where 
we  were  watched  from  the  top  of  a  neighboring  tower 
by  a  severe  and  good  master,  who  had  given  us  his  law, 
followed  us  with  his  eyes,  sent  us  frequent  messengers, 
protected  us,  punished  us,  and  held  us  always  in  his 
hand.  And  suddenly  we  were  living  in  an  out-of-the- 
way  corner  of  the  immense  universe.  Heaven  with- 
drew into  measureless  space,  and  God  fled  into  infin- 
ity. "  That  knowledge  was  indeed  too  wonderful  for 
that  generation.  Many  lost  for  a  time  the  feeling  of 
the  personality  of  deity.  The  science  of  God  might 
be  exalted,  clarified,  but  the  love  of  God  grew  cold, 
and  men  of  philosophic  mind  felt  nearer  to  the  school 
of  Athens  than  to  the  school  of  Alexandria  or  of  Hippo, 
far  nearer  than  to  the  Angelic  or  to  the  Mystic  Doctor. 
It  is  a  commonplace  to  connect  the  renaissance  with 
the  invention  of  printing  and  the  spread  of  classical 
learning,  but  even  here  there  is  perhaps  some  misap- 
prehension. Many  of  the  classics  had  been  known  and 
used  by  literary  men  habitually  and  constantly  since 
the  age  of  Bede.  The  "  Eomance  of  the  Eose  "  reeks 
with  antiquity  of  a  certain  kind;  Villon  has  even 
traces  of  the  classic  lyric  spirit.  Of  course,  when 
manuscripts  of  ancient  authors  were  printed,  they  were 
more  widely  read.  But  the  point  of  importance  is 
that  they  were  read  in  a  new  spirit  and  seen  in  a 
wholly  new  light.  For  just  at  the  .time  when  print- 
ing was  invented,  and  the  inventors  looked  about  them 
for  books  to  print,  it  happened  that  the  national  liter- 
ature was  at  a  low  ebb,  having  indeed  been  steadily 
degenerating  since  the  thirteenth  century  in  France  as 
in  Germany,  while  at  the  same  time  it  chanced  that, 
through  the  fall  of  Constantinople  and  other  external 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND   RENASCENCE.  21 

causes,  a  vast  number  of  classical  manuscripts  became 
for  the  first  time  available.  Hence  the  books  first  mul- 
tiplied —  with  some  natural  exceptions,  such  as  the 
"  Bible  *  and  the  "  Imitation  of  Christ  " — were  the  clas- 
sics ;  and  these  books  thus  obtained  a  vantage  ground 
in  the  minds  of  the  reading  public  that  they  could 
hardly  have  attained  had  they  been  obliged  to  contest 
the  favor  of  the  once  popular  writers  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  whom  time  and  the  widening  of  the  human 
mind  had  now  crowded  from  view.  This,  again,  has 
been  admirably  expressed  by  Faguet :  "  On  one  side 
were  the  classics  and  the  writings  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  printed,  portable,  legible,  inconceivably  mul- 
tiplied ;  on  the  other  side  the  mediseval  books,  manu- 
scripts, hard  to  handle,  to  take  in,  to  read,  or  to  find. 
So  printing  gradually  suppressed  the  middle  ages, 
and  by  presenting  antiquity  and  the  sixteenth  century 
to  eye  and  mind  under  the  same  forms,  in  the  same 
styles  and  types,  and  as  it  were  in  the  same  language, 
it  expressed  and  asserted  emphatically  that  continua- 
tion of  antiquity  by  the  sixteenth  century  that  was 
dimly  in  all  minds,  and  cast,  in  like  measure,  the 
middle  ages  into  the  shade  as  though  they  had  not 
been. "  l  Herein  lies  the  significance  of  the  word 
"  renaissance,"  — a  new  birth  of  an  old  life  after  ages 
of  quiescence  which  men  despise  and  make  haste  to 
forget,  almost  as  much  repelled  by  their  own  tradition 
as  they  are  attracted  to  a  foreign  past.  It  was  a  state 
of  mind  unique  in  history,  and  full  of  the  germs  of 
political,  social,  and  literary  revolution. 

The  three  elements  —  pagan,  humanistic,  and  protes- 
tant — manifest  themselves  throughout  Europe,  but  with 
different  degrees  and  results.      In  Germany  the  renas- 
1  Faguet,  Seizieme  siecle,  x. 


22  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

cence  is  ethical,  religious.  The  voice  of  the  human- 
ists is  feeble  and  soon  lost  in  domestic  strife,  while 
the  pagan  element  was  never  deeply  rooted  among 
them.  Here,  therefore,  the  classical  renaissance  is 
deferred  for  more  than  three  centuries,  to  spring,  like 
a  fully  armed  Pallas,  from  the  brain  of  Lessing,  and 
to  be  the  presiding  genius  of  the  ideal  humanist, 
Goethe.  In  England,  too,  the  religious  side  predom- 
inates, but  always  mingled  with  humanism ;  while  in 
the  Italy  of  Boccaccio  and  the  France  of  Eonsard  the 
movement  is  more  literary,  artistic,  and  at  most  crypto- 
pagan,  except  for  the  Huguenots,  whose  spirit  in  liter- 
ature hardly  extends  beyond  Calvin  and  D'Aubigne. 
Here  the  normal  state  of  mind  is  humanistic,  eclectic, 
"  with  a  Christian  soul  and  a  pagan  art, "  —  an  illogical 
compromise  that  reaches  its  supreme  expression  in 
Chateaubriand,  though  it  can  be  seen  almost  every- 
where and  always  in  France,  as  for  instance  in 
Boileau's  exclusion  of  Christian  mysteries  from  the 
domain  of  poetry,  and  in  the  resulting  impersonality 
of  the  whole  literature  of  the  classic  school.  The 
pagan  element  in  the  renaissance,  on  the  contrary,  has 
predominated  only  during  a  part  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, though  it  is  fundamentally  the  spirit  of  Eabelais, 
of  Montaigne,  of  La  Fontaine  and  of  Moliere.  This 
spirit  is  opposed  equally  to  Catholicism  and  to  Protes- 
tantism, while  the  humanists  content  themselves  with 
reprobating  the  latter  and  its  congener,  Jansenism. 
The  triumph  of  the  pagan  renaissance  in  the  age  of 
Voltaire  was,  however,  short.  The  spirit  of  the  ency- 
clopaedists yielded  to  that  of  the  "  Genius  of  Chris- 
tianity," while  the  revival  of  the  pagan  tradition  has  in 
it  an  element  of  Jansenism,  and  the  Reformers  have 
become  Free-Thinkers.  Since  the  Romantic  School  the 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND    RENASCENCE.  23 

mark  of  the  period  has  been  a  varied  individualism. 
There  is  no  longer  one  Spirit  of  the  Time,  but  many 
spirits. 

If  now  we  return  to  the  sixteenth  century  and  seek 
in  it  the  expression  of  these  various  tendencies,  we 
shall  find  that  this  age  of  singular  activity  owes  little 
to  its  immediate  predecessor,  save  a  style  to  which  De 
la  Salle  had  given  a  graceful  suppleness  and  the  homi- 
lists  an  oratorical  flow.  In  every  kind  of  literary  art 
this  century  advances  by  leaps,  spurred  to  activity 
first  and  most  by  the  example  of  the  Italian  renais- 
sance, for  the  ambition  of  their  kings  had  brought 
them  into  repeated  and  close  though  disastrous  con- 
tact with  that  ancient  home  of  art,  but  impelled  also 
by  the  revival  of  learning  at  home,  and  by  the  reli- 
gious ferment,  which  was  spread  by  printing  and  the 
accompanying  diffusion  of  primary  knowledge,  and 
grew,  like  yeast,  by  what  it  fed  on.  There  is  noth- 
ing to  compare  in  the  fourteenth  or  fifteenth  centuries 
with  the  prose  satire  of  the  "  Menippe'e  "  or  the  barbed 
verses  of  D'Aubignd;  nothing  to  match  the  lyrics  of 
Marot,  still  less  of  Ronsard ;  nothing  like  the  criticism 
of  Du  Bellay  or  the  dignified  drama  of  Jodelle ;  no  such 
fiction  as  blossomed  beneath  the  dainty  fingers  of 
Queen  Marguerite;  no  such  wit  as  Beroald's  and  Des 
Pdriers' ;  above  all,  nothing  to  match  the  stern  force  of 
Calvin,  the  marvellous  well-spring  of  Eabelais'  humor, 
or  the  novel  charm  of  Montaigne's  essays.  Nor  must 
we  forget  the  numerous  translations  that  now  first 
betray  a  restless  search  for  new  inspirations.  The 
drooping  taste  for  idealized  adventure  receives  a  fillip 
from  a  version  of  "  Amadis  of  Gaul, "  the  great  ro- 
mance of  Spanish  chivalry.  Amyot  turns  into  prose 
that  may  still  arouse  admiration,  "  Daphnis  and 


24  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Chloe, "  that  exquisite  pastoral  of  the  Greek  Longus,  as 
well  as  Plutarch's  lives  of  the  great  men  of  Greece  and 
Eome,  that  became  a  repertory  for  the  novelists  and 
dramatists  of  the  next  century.  It  is  clear  already 
that  we  have  to  deal  with  a  remarkable  diversity  of 
genius.  Indeed  this  is,  like  our  own,  a  century  of 
literary  independence,  with  few  rules,  save  the  "  Do 
what  thou  wilt"  of  Eabelais'  Abbey  of  Thelema,  and 
no  enduring  literary  schools  or  traditions.  It  was 
not  till  its  very  close  that  the  ethical  and  artistic  aspi- 
rations of  the  renaissance  were  chastened  and  united  by 
Malherbe,  who  "  joined  with  a  somewhat  heavy  hand 
antique  art  to  modern  rationalism,"  and,  though  him- 
self a  little  man,  owes  to  greater  followers  the  distinc- 
tion of  being  first  in  the  classical  period. 

The  poetry  of  the  century,  with  the  exception  of  a 
portion,  and  that  perhaps  not  the  best,  of  D'Aubigne"s 
verse,  is  humanistic,  continuing  with  greater  resources 
and  greater  zeal  the  study  of  classic  art  that  was 
already  an  old  tradition  in  France.  But  while  the 
middle  ages  had  sought  their  inspiration  chiefly  in  the 
more  accessible  Latin  writers,  in  Ovid  and  Boethius, 
in  Livy  and  the  essays  of  Cicero,  Marot,  the  first  of  the 
renaissance  poets  who  need  detain  our  attention,  knew 
and  valued  Virgil,  Martial,  Lucian,  and  the  pseudo- 
Musaeus  ;  while  Eonsard,  with  his  fellows  of  the  Pleiad, 
seems  often  to  have  judged  the  value  of  an  acquisition 
by  its  difficulty,  prizing  Pindar  more  than  Homer,  and 
finding  his  most  genuine  delight  first  in  Petrarch,  then 
in  Anacreon. 

Clement  Marot  (1497-1544)  had  the  happy  fortune 
to  unite  northern  blood  to  southern  birth,  and  to  com- 
bine many  of  the  virtues  of  each.  In  his  ethics  he 
was  a  sort  of  dilettante  reformer,  of  the  type  that 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND   RENASCENCE.  25 

gathered  at  the  court  of  the  broad-minded  and  tolerant 
Princess  Marguerite,  afterward  Queen  of  Navarre,  her- 
self a  lyric  poet,  whose  "  Marguerites  "  show  a  consider- 
able development  of  that  personal  note  which  the 
Pleiad,  Malherbe,  and  Boileau  were  to  deaden  in  France 
till  the  rise  of  the  Eomantic  School.  Under  her 
patronage  Marot  furthered  religious  disintegration  by 
his  translation  of  the  Psalms,  which  was  very  popular, 
even  after  it  was  condemned  by  the  Sorbonne  as  smack- 
ing of  heresy.  Here  the  subject  lent  him  a  dignity 
that  his  other  work  is  apt  to  lack,  being  in  the  main 
pretty  rather  than  beautiful,  light  rather  than  strong, 
graceful  rather  than  grand.  His  great  service  to  French 
verse  is  that  he  did  for  it  what  the  "  Cent  nouvelles 
nouvelles  "  had  already  done  for  its  prose.  He  restored 
naturalism  and  simplicity.  For  the  artificial  excess  of 
ornament  and  allegory  he  substituted  his  native  grace 
and  delicacy. l  He  is  now,  and  probably  will  always 
be,  most  read  for  his  lighter  work,  —  for  his  songs, 
epistles,  epigrams,  animal  fables,  and  the  nonsense 
verses,  the  "  Coq-a-1'ane. "  And  even  in  these  fields 
he  is  chiefly  known  by  a  very  few  pieces  de  resistance 
of  the  reading-books  and  anthologies.  All  school-boys 
know  "  The  Eat  and  the  Lion, "  most  will  have  read 
Marot's  deliciously  naive  begging  letter  to  King  Fran- 
cis I.  (Epist.  11  and  28);  but  to  one  who  has  read  the 
whole  body  of  his  work,  the  songs,  satirical  or  con- 
vivial, such  as  "  Frere  Lubin, "  "  Dedans  Paris, "  or 
"  Au  bon  vieux  temps, "  will  seem  more  characteristic 
of  his  natural  diversity,  and  give  us  a  more  human 
sympathy  with  one  who  was  always  a  good  fellow,  and 

1  The  instinct  of  beauty  occasionally  fails  him,  yet  he  falls  but 
seldom  into  such  crass  naturalism  as  that  of  "  Le  Laid  teton,"  a  com- 
panion piece  to  Baudelaire's  "  Charogne." 


26  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

always  seemed  so  when  it  was  not  for  his  interest  to  cut 
a  long  face. 

Marot's  imitators  were  usually  more  serious,  always 
less  talented  than  he,  though  to  one  of  them,  Saint- 
Ge'lais,  French  verse  owes  the  introduction  of  the 
Italian  sonnet.  The  Calvinistic  satirist,  Agrippa 
d'Aubigne'  (1550-1630),  though  of  a  much  later  period, 
shared  Marot's  sympathies  rather  than  those  of  the  free- 
thinking  Pleiad,  of  whom  he  is  sometimes  called  a 
"  rebellious "  follower.  His  trenchant  satires  did 
much  to  establish  the  domination  of  the  alexandrine 
verse  that  Eonsard  had  preached  rather  than  practised. 
They  were  also  the  first  worthy  work  in  the  manner  of 
Juvenal  that  France  has  to  show.  But  even  before 
Marot's  death  a  group  of  young  talents  had  gathered 
at  the  College  Coqueret,  whose  influence  was  to  be 
temporarily  greater  and  more  lasting  in  some  of  its 
phases  than  that  of  any  which  had  preceded  them. 
This  "  Pleiad  "  of  genius  supplemented  what  was  best 
in  Marot's  naturalism  with  a  fuller  measure  of  the 
classical  spirit,  and  so  set  French  literature,  both  in  its 
substance,  its  form,  and  its  language,  in  new  paths, 
which  those  who  afterward  most  blamed  their  early 
excesses  were  most  zealous  silently  to  follow.  The 
Pleiad  was  first  in  France  to  preach  and  practise  par- 
ticular heed  to  the  cadence  of  the  single  verse,  while 
lyric  poets  before  them  had  regarded  the  stanza  as  the 
unit  in  poetic  composition.  It  was  also  first  to  reprove 
and  regulate  the  once  unbridled  license  of  newly 
coined  words  and  phrases,  though  even  their  liberal 
culture  went  farther  in  this  than  following  generations 
were  willing  to  follow.  With  delicate  feeling  they 
laid  stress  on  the  choice  and  place  of  words  in  poetic 
composition,  and  completed  the  discredit  of  an  artificial 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND   RENASCENCE.  27 

and  rhetorical  style  against  which  Marot  had  already 
raised  the  standard  of  revolt.  But  while  Marot  had 
the  tact  to  "  choose  the  wheat  and  let  the  chaff  be  still  " 
in  the  traditional  forms,  he  introduced  into  literature 
no  new  blood.  With  Konsard  and  his  brothers  of  the 
Pleiad  the  case  is  different.  They  were  conscious  inno- 
vators ;  their  advent  could  not  have  been  anticipated, 
and  is  indeed  almost  a  unique  fact  in  literary  history. 
It  was  probably  in  1541  that  Pierre  de  Eonsard 
(1524-1585),  then  a  travelled  young  soldier  of  eighteen, 
left  his  profession,  and  the  promise  of  a  brilliant 
career,  for  studious  retirement  at  Paris  and  the  prized 
instructions  of  Daurat,  who  presently  began  to  gather 
about  him  a  group  of  enthusiastic  young  scholars,  such 
as  might  have  been  sought  in  vain  elsewhere  in 
France.  Belleau  and  Baif  had  preceded  Konsard ;  Du 
Bellay  he  brought  back  from  a  journey  to  Poictiers; 
Jodelle  and  Pontus  de  Tyard  soon  joined  them  to  com- 
plete their  "  brigade, "  —  a  name  that  their  number, 
seven,  led  them  to  exchange  for  Pleiad,  when,  in  1549, 
the  group  first  ventured  to  break  their  studious  silence, 
and  to  proclaim  their  views  and  purposes  in  the  "  Dd- 
fense  et  illustration  de  la  langue  franchise, "  ostensibly 
by  Du  Bellay,  but  really  a  joint  manifesto  of  the 
school.  The  purpose  of  this  famous  pamphlet  is  to 
urge  its  readers  who  have  entered  the  classical  camp 
"  to  escape  from  the  midst  of  the  Greeks  and  through 
the  ranks  of  the  Komans,  and  to  come  back  to  the 
jheart  of  their  own  well-beloved  France,"  that  they 
may  bring  with  them  from  those  foreign  literatures 
what  may  be  profitable  to  their  own.  Now,  any  man 
who  reads  widely  in  the  writings  of  the  fifteenth  and 
sixteenth  centuries  will  find  the  conviction  grow  that 
French,  as  a  vehicle  of  literary  expression  for  the 


28  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

renaissance  mind,  was  in  need  of  just  that  new  blood 
that  could  be  drawn  from  the  school  of  Petrarch  and 
from  the  revival  of  classical  studies,  the  source 
whence  Italy  had  already  drawn  its  fuller  life.  The 
men  of  the  Pleiad  were  no  Chauvinists,  but  yet  they 
were  thoroughly  national  and  patriotic  in  their  aims, 
and  quick  to  learn  from  their  own  errors,  as  well  as 
from  those  of  their  erudite  predecessors,1  so  that  their 
last  work  is  among  their  best.  In  them  the  humanism 
of  the  French  renaissance  reaches  its  fullest  expression, 
while  of  the  ethical  and  philosophic  phase  of  the  move- 
ment they  have  hardly  a  trace. 

Typical  of  all,  except  Jodelle,  is  Eonsard ;  he  alone 
is  still  generally  read  by  cultured  men,  apart  from 
special  studies,  and  of  him  alone  it  is  necessary  to 
speak  here.  His  literary  life  was  a  constant  triumph. 
Almost  from  the  outset,  and  until  his  death,  he  was 
easily  first  at  court  and  in  the  popular  esteem ;  and  he 
held  this  place  after  his  death,  though  in  Desportes  and 
less  talented  imitators  among  the  classical  decadents, 
the  blood  of  the  French  muse  began  to  run  thin,  till 
Malherbe  gave  a  new  life  to  Eonsard's  revival  of  classic 
taste  by  infusing  it  with  the  rationalistic  spirit. 

Eonsard  asserted  his  pre-eminence  by  his  mastery 
of  the  language  and  of  metre,  and  by  a  poetic  imagi- 
nation, without  which  the  most  skilful  rhymester  is 
only  an  artisan.  In  language  he  encouraged  his  readers 
to  "  a  wise  boldness  in  inventing  new  words,  so  long 
as  they  were  moulded  and  fashioned  on  a  pattern  already 
recognized  by  the  people. "  He  might  have  said,  with 
Dante,  that  language  never  constrained  him  to  say 
what  he  would  not ;  but  he  had  often  constrained  lan- 
guage to  say  what  it  would  not,  though  in  this  regard 
1  Especially  Le  Maire  de  Beiges,  Heroet,  and  Maurice  Sceve. 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND   RENASCENCE.  29 

the  sum  of  his  offending  does  not  exceed  two  hundred 
words.  However  the  case  may  be  now  in  academic 
France,  Eonsard  understood  for  his  time  exactly  what 
it  meant  to  have  a  mastery  of  his  own  tongue;  and 
though  perhaps  he  strained  too  much  at  foreign  forms, 
neglecting  the  poetic  worth  that  lay  in  the  popular 
speech,  yet  in  his  prose  as  in  his  verse  there  was  a 
vigor  and  a  brilliancy  that  had  not  been  equalled,  and 
was  not  exceeded  till  the  appearance  of  Montaigne's 
"  Essays. " 

It  is  curious  to  note  that  this  crystallization  of  mod- 
ern prose  which  Ronsard  inaugurated  in  France,  had 
its  parallels  in  the  contemporary  literatures  of  Ger- 
many, Spain,  and  England.  In  every  case  it  was 
political  unity  that  gave  the  first  impulse  and  forced 
the  dialects  into  subordination  to  the  dominant  speech 
of  the  court.  Eonsard  began  for  the  French  language 
very  much  what  Luther  accomplished  for  the  German, 
and  in  prosody  also  he  was  an  innovator  and  a  re- 
former. He  failed  indeed  to  revive  the  Pindaric  ode, 
the  value  of  which  for  modern  use  he  greatly  exagger- 
ated; but  he  restored  the  alexandrine  to  its  place  of 
honor,  though  he  did  not  always  follow  his  own  teach- 
ing. He  was  also  first  to  popularize  the  sonnet,  and 
he  introduced  an  endless  variety  of  lyric  stanzas,  whose 
metres  were  as  graceful  as  they  were  original.  It  is 
here  that  his  best  work  is  to  be  sought,  in  the  groups 
called  "  Amours, "  "  Gaietds, "  and  in  the  later  odes, 
rather  than  in  the  classical  eclogues  and  odes,  or  in 
the  unfinished  epic,  "  La  Franciade.  *  Anthologies 
never  fail  to  cite  "  Mignonne,  allons  voir  si  la  rose, " 
and  the  sonnet  to  Helene  beginning  "  Quand  vous  serez 
bien  vieille ; "  and  they  seldom  omit  the  "  Drenched 
Cupid," — a  subject  borrowed  from  Anacreon,  and 


30  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

interesting  because  it  admits  a  comparison  with  La 
Fontaine.  But,  charming  as  these  are,  it  is  only  pre- 
scription that  causes  them  to  be  so  uniformly  preferred 
to  a  score  of  others,  filled  with  the  peculiar  naivete  and 
flavor  of  the  renaissance  that  later  centuries  so  seldom 
recover.  "  La  petite  colombelle  "  yields  nothing  in  the 
comparison  with  Catullus  that  it  naturally  suggests; 
and  "  Cupid's  School,"  borrowed  from  Bion,  is  treated 
in  a  way  to  put  the  creditor  under  obligations  to  his 
debtor.  Then,  too,  there  is  "  L'Alouette"  (the  Sky- 
lark), as  characteristic  of  France  and  of  his  century  as 
Shelley's  is  of  England  and  of  his.  Eonsard  is  a  poet 
in  the  fresh  vigor  of  hope.  He  is  not  looking  with 
the  Englishman's  forlorn  hope  from  some  Euganean 
hill  for  the  "  green  isles  that  needs  must  be  in  the 
deep,  wide  sea  of  misery ;  "  his  Skylark  is  a  charming 
bird  to  be  enjoyed,  not  to  be  yearned  for  as  the  symbol 
of  what  she  is  not.  There  is  hardly  ever  a  morbid 
strain  in  his  verses,  for  Eonsard  at  his  best  is  the  poet 
of  a  free  and  healthy  naturalism.  Hence  the  last  half- 
century  has  been  peculiarly  favorable  to  a  revival  of  his 
fame,  which  has  betrayed  some  enthusiasts  into  an  ex- 
cessive admiration.  He  lacked  clear  sesthetic  stan- 
dards because  he  lacked  intellectual  independence ;  but 
the  fact  remains  that  no  French  poet  before  Victor  Hugo 
is  so  much  in  sympathy  with  the  spirit  of  our  age  as 
Eonsard,  while  at  the  same  time  no  poet  has  a  more 
cheerful  note  or  a  more  needed  message  to  this  pessi- 
mistic generation. 

Eonsard  lived  a  happy,  hopeful  life,  and  the  peace- 
ful current  of  his  declining  years  was  crowned  with  the 
"  honor,  love,  obedience,  troops  of  friends, "  that  should 
accompany  it,  and  with  a  peaceful  and  holy  death 
(December  27,  1585).  A  hopeful,  healthy  joy  of  life, 


MIDDLE    AGE   AND   EENASCENCE.  31 

rarely  crossed  by  a  querulous  cloud,  remained  with 
him,  as  with  Goethe,  to  the  end.  Just  so  far  as  this 
temper  has  prevailed  in  it,  French  literature  has  been 
strong  and  helpful.  Eonsard  did  more  than  any  one 
man  to  form  the  literary  language  of  France.  It  was 
his  humanism,  corrected,  modified,  and  then  ignored 
by  Malherbe,  that  dominated  the  age  of  Louis  XIV. , 
though  it  was  reserved  for  our  own  to  restore  to  him 
his  long  neglected  honor.  "  The  classical  spirit  was 
formed  in  accord  with  him,  without  him,  and  appar- 
ently in  opposition  to  him.  He  had  it,  he  did  not 
inspire  it.  He  is  the  final  type  of  it,  and  he  is  not  its 
founder ;  he  is  its  first  date,  and  he  is  not  its  source. 
But  that  is  no  fault  of  his. "  1 

In  the  drama  the  Pleiad,  represented  by  Jodelle 
(1532-1573),  was  less  original  and  more  classical  in 
tone.  His  "  Cleopatra  "  is  the  first  "  regular  "  tragedy, 
the  first  that  answers  to  the  distorted  conception  he 
had  formed  of  the  Aristotelian  unities,  and  his 
"  Eugene  "  is  the  first  "  regular  "  comedy.  Both  were 
studied,  as  was  all  his  work,  more  from  the  Latin  than 
from  the  Greek ;  but,  defective  if  not  mistaken  as  was 
his  critical  conception,  his  ideas  were  so  in  accord 
with  the  French  spirit  on  its  good  and  its  weak  side, 
that  they  were  industriously  imitated,  till  at  the  close 
of  the  century  (1599)  Alexander  Hardy  began  the 
rehabilitation  of  the  national  drama  at  the  Hotel  de 
Bourgogne,  till  then  still  occupied  by  the  mysteries  of 
the  Confraternity  of  the  Passion. 

The  first  noteworthy  prose  work  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  the  "  Memoirs "  of  Philippe  de  Commynes 
(1445-1511),  belongs  rather  to  the  fifteenth;  but  as 
it  was  not  published  till  1524,  his  effect  on  the 

1  Faguet,  Seizieme  siecle,  287. 


32  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

literature  of  the  time  must  be  considered  with  that  of 
the  men  of  the  early  French  renaissance.  What 
strikes  one  most  in  the  man's  writing,  as  in  his  life, 
is  his  practical  and  modern  common -sense.  For  the 
knight-errantry  of  Froissart  he  substitutes  a  diplo- 
matic shrewdness  and  a  wide  curiosity  that  always  fol- 
lows the  what  with  the  why.  Successively  the  servant 
of  Charles  the  Bold,  of  Louis  XL,  and  of  Charles 
VIII.,  he  guarded  beneath  his  diplomacy  the  naive 
faith  of  a  man  whose  own  experience  is  full  of  riddles 
that  some  sort  of  providence  alone  is  able  to  solve  ;  but 
he  joins  to  this  an  equally  naive  belief  in  shrewdness 
and  a  distrust  of  over-boldness  in  the  affairs  of  the 
world.  This  undogmatic  religiosity  is  a  modern  trait ; 
modern,  too,  are  his  curiosity,  his  democratic  sympathies, 
and  the  natural  restraint  of  his  narrative  that  rarely 
passes  beyond  the  limits  of  his  immediate  observa- 
tion. Though  himself  little  touched  by  the  renais- 
sance, his  attitude  toward  the  Church  ranks  him 
among  the  ancestors  of  the  humanists,  of  whom  in- 
deed there  is  a  long  line  reaching  far  back  into  the 
thirteenth  century. 

On  the  other  hand,  Calvin  (1509-1564)  represented 
the  new  spirit  of  intransigent  reform,  the  attempted 
restoration  of  primitive  Christianity.  Trained  both 
for  theology  and  law,  he  joined  in  after  life  the  doctor 
to  the  lawgiver,  and  became  at  once  the  Moses  and  the 
Aaron  of  the  chosen  people  who  left  the  flesh-pots  of 
their  French  bondage  to  gather  in  the  Genevan 
Canaan.  With  his  teaching  we  have  nothing  to  do 
here  save  to  note  its  revolt  against  medievalism ;  but 
the  sober  logic  and  classical  polish  of  his  style  give 
him  a  very  high  place  —  if  we  regard  form  alone,  the 
highest  place  —  among  the  prose  writers  of  his  century. 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND   RENASCENCE.  33 

It  is  sober  sense  enforced  with  a  lapidarian  clearness 
and  precision,  and  therefore  lacking  somewhat  in  sym- 
pathy and  imagination,  bent  on  commanding  rather 
than  winning  assent,  on  being  understood  rather  than 
on  being  loved ;  here,  too,  "  the  style  is  the  man, "  — 
stern,  imperious,  lofty,  sincere,  and  sombre,1  at  once 
borne  up  and  borne  down  by  the  all-pervading  sense 
of  the  immanence  of  deity.  But  in  the  less  competent 
hands  of  his  imitators  and  successors  his  style  inevi- 
tably degenerated  to  pedantic  heaviness,  though  not 
until  it  had  shown  the  unguessed  powers  of  French  for 
accurate  exposition  and  subtle  disputation. 

But  this  century  of  renascence  was  distinguished  no 
less  and  characterized  much  better  by  Eabelais,  a 
remarkably  keen  and  learned  man,  who  spent  his 
life  in  ridiculing  with  the  most  bitter  satire  what  he 
still  professed  to  believe.  In  his  career,  as  in  his 
work,  there  appears  at  first  sight  a  constant  vein  of 
insincerity,  a  Mephistophelian  spirit  that  sees  the 
weak,  the  laughable,  the  ridiculous  side  of  that  which 
it  holds  dearest  and  holiest ;  but  when  work  and  life 
are  more  closely  examined,  Eabelais'  spirit  seems 
rather  that  of  a  profound  philosopher  who  discerns 
the  essential  antinomy  in  all  apprehension  of  human 
truth,  so  that  he  rises  far  above  the  mere  mockery  of 
Lucian  or  the  diabolic  ferocity  of  Swift.  Traces  of  the 
same  philosophic  attitude  can  be  found  in  Reuchlin, 
in  Erasmus,  and  in  other  doctors  of  the  Reformation, 
more  learned  than  bold;  but  it  is  in  France  that  this 

1  He  tries  occasionally  to  lighten  his  sermons  with  some  metaphor 
from  common  life  or  even  with  vulgar  dialect;  but  it  is  heavy  fooling, 
and  one  feels  that  he  shakes  with  awkward  reluctance  this  cap  and 
bells.  See  for  instances,  as  well  as  for  a  keen  study  of  Calvin's  doc- 
trine, Faguet,  Seizieme  siccle,  127-197,  and  especially  192-193. 

3 


34  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

spirit  can  be  nrost  frequently  and  constantly  noted, 
and  the  unchallenged  leader  of  its  representatives  is 
Francois  Eabelais  (1495-1553),  who  is  the  most  com- 
plete reflection  of  the  too  sanguine  hopes  of  the  pagan 
renaissance,  of  its  serious  aspirations,  its  over-hasty 
generalizations,  and  its  joy  of  life. 

Rabelais'  satire  is  put  into  the  form  of  a  burlesque 
romance  of  adventures;  but  the  form  is  a  very  thin 
disguise,  and  the  thread  of  the  narrative  is  of  the  slen- 
derest. Throughout,  his  real  interest  is  in  destructive 
criticism  of  the  political  and  social  conditions  of  his 
time.  His  mind  became  constructive  only  when 
stirred  by  the  worthlessness  of  mediaeval  education  or 
by  the  abuses  of  decaying  monasticism.  The  five 
books  1  of  his  great  satire,  which  differ  sufficiently  from 
one  another  to  be  treated  as  separate  works,  appeared 
at  various  times  between  1532  and  1564,  when  Rabe- 
lais had  already  been  eleven  years  dead,  and  beyond 
the  reach  both  of  the  just  indignation  and  of  the  petty 
partisan  hate  that  had  pursued  him  through  all  his 
mature  years.  The  first  book  bears  the  title  "  Gar- 
gantua, "  the  others  "  Pantagruel ;  "  and  it  is  these  that 
merit  both  the  greatest  admiration  and  the  greatest 
reprobation.  They  are  probably  more  studied  to-day 
than  any  other  work  of  the  time.  They  are  more 
witty,  more  caustic,  more  profoundly  skeptical,  more 
unscrupulous,  and  more  unclean  than  any  other  book 
of  that  age.  Indeed  their  coarseness  is  perhaps  un- 
paralleled in  literature,  and  serves  to  hide  both  the 
author's  wit  and  his  political  and  pedagogic  wisdom. 
That  he  should  have  begun  life  as  a  monk,  while  only 

1  Brunetiere,  Lanson,  and  other  critics  hold  that  the  fifth  book  is  a 
Huguenot  pamphlet  of  another  man  and  time,  though  posthumous 
papers  of  Rabelais  were  used  in  its  composition. 


MIDDLE   AGE    AND   RENASCENCE.  35 

his  voluntary  resignation  prevented  his  ending  it  as 
a  cure*,  illustrates  the  condition  of  the  Church.  In 
the  interval  between  his  leaving  the  Franciscan  clois- 
ter of  Fontenay  le  Conte  and  his  entry  into  the  pres- 
bytery of  Meudon,  he  had  been  a  Benedictine  canon, 
a  wandering  scholar,  a  student  of  medicine,  a  scien- 
tist, physician  to  a  diplomatic  ambassador,  and  a 
voluntary  exile. 

Kabelais'  book  as  a  whole  plays  less  part  in  litera- 
ture than  some  of  the  characters  in  it.  Gargantua, 
the  giant  father  of  Pantagruel,  was  generally  recog- 
nized as  typical  of  the  good-humored,  easy-going  roy- 
alty of  Francis  I.  Panurge,  the  companion  and  servant 
of  Pantagruel,  and  more  interesting  than  his  master, 
embodies,  as  Saintsbury  says,  "  a  somewhat  diseased 
intellectual  refinement,  and  the  absence  of  morality  in 
the  wide  Aristotelian  sense,  with  the  presence  of 
almost  all  other  good  qualities.  "  "  He  is  the  principal 
triumph  of  Kabelais'  character-drawing,  and  the  most 
original,  as  well  as  the  most  puzzling,  figure  in  the 
book.  A  coward,  a  drunkard,  a  lecher,  a  spiteful 
trickster,  a  spendthrift,  but  all  the  while  infinitely 
amusing. "  *  Opposed  to  him  is  the  lusty  animalism 
of  Friar  John,  whose  famous  Abbey  of  Thelema,  with 
its  hedonistic  motto,  "  Do  what  thpu  wilt, "  represents 
Kabelais'  ideal  of  the  "  natural  life,"  and  the  negation 
of  all  the  restraints,  moral  and  social,  that  he  had 
learned  to  know  and  to  hate  in  his  monastic  experi- 
ence. A  considerable  part  of  the  whole  is  occupied 
with  Panurge 's  debate  with  himself  and  with  Pan- 
tagruel as  to  whether  he  shall  marry,  his  deliciously 
humorous  recourse  to  all  manner  of  authorities  on 

1  Short  History  of  French  Literature,  p.  186.  Encyc.  Brit.,  art. 
Rabelais,  vol.  xx.  p.  196. 


36  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

this  matter  of  universal  interest,  and  his  final  deter- 
mination to  consult  the  oracle  of  the  "  Dive  Bouteille, " 
which,  after  various  adventures  that  offer  scope  to  un- 
bridled satire,  finally  gives  the  truly  oracular  response, 
"  Trinq  "  (drink),  as  the  solution  of  this  and  all  other 
riddles  of  earth. 

Of  the  serious  parts  of  Eabelais'  work  the  best  are 
probably  the  scattered  chapters  on  the  education  of 
Paiitagruel,  which  show  great  originality  and  force, 
and  a  remarkable  anticipation  of  the  modern  scientific 
spirit.  But  usually,  however  earnestly  Eabelais  may 
feel,  his  zealous  optimism  will  find  some  grotesque 
mask  for  its  expression.  Of  this  comic  vein  the  most 
striking  feature  is  the  unique  and  astounding  vocabu- 
lary. He  will  pile  up  huge  lists  of  cooks  or  of  fan- 
tastic meats,  of  dances  and  of  games,  or  he  will  take 
some  noun  and  heap  around  it  all  conceivable  adjec- 
tives, sometimes  arraying  them  by  the  hundreds  in 
columns.1  The  reader  is  led  through  as  devious  paths 
as  those  of  Tristram  Shandy's  autobiography.  There 
is  a  psychological  analysis  of  wonderful  keenness,  a 
profusion  of  learning,  a  carnival  of  wit  and  imagina- 
tion, the  loftiest  thoughts  and  the  vilest  fancies,  all 
woven  together  into  a  mighty  maze  by  "  pantagruel- 
ism, "  —  a  militant  .faith  in  nature  and  instinct  that  by 
its  robust  humor  and  the  solvent  of  its  destructive 
satire  becomes  the  extreme  type  of  the  pagan  phase  of 
the  renaissance,  the  source  of  the  eighteenth-century 
ethics  and  of  modern  French  realism. 

For  independence  of  all  ascetic  restraint  is  Eabelais' 
philosophy  of  life,  as  it  had  been  that  of  Jean  de 
Meung,  and  was  to  be  that  of  Voltaire.  But  its  in- 

1  Books  i.  22,  v.  33,  bis.  Book  iii.  26  has  a  list  of  157  adjectives, 
and  iii.  38  a  list  of  210. 


MIDDLE    AGE   AND   RENASCENCE.  37 

consistency  with  mediaeval  Christianity  seems  more 
obvious  to  us  than  it  did  to  him,  who  remained  all  his 
life  nominally  and  doubtless  sincerely  a  Catholic, 
though  to  him  the  yoke  was  certainly  lighter  than  to 
most  who  make  a  Christian  profession.  Still  there  is 
nothing  authentic  in  his  work  that  can  be  construed 
into  a  direct  attack  on  the  faith.  His  position  was 
like  that  of  Erasmus.  He  was  irreverent  at  times  ;  but 
those  who  find  an  evidence  of  infidelity  in  this,  or  in 
his  monumental  filthiness  of  speech,  are  usually 
unacquainted  with  the  common  language  of  his  con- 
temporaries and  predecessors  of  the  ages  of  faith.  Ex- 
perience has  shown  that  these  things  are  less  matters 
of  morality  than  of  taste  and  feeling,  of  age  and  race. 
Rabelais  had  more  wit  than  the  rest,  and  so  did 
better  what  many  tried  to  do.  They  have  sunk  in 
their  mire  to  oblivion,  but  the  impurity  of  Rabelais  is 
like  an  unclean  insect  wrapped  in  amber.  He  must 
be  judged  by  his  time ;  and  even  at  his  coarsest  it  is 
always  honest  fun  that  inspires  his  rollicking  laugh, 
never  the  prurient  toying  with  voluptuousness  and  the 
sniggering  of  the  eighteenth -century  professors  of  the 
science  of  erotics. 

The  world-wisdom  of  Rabelais  was  much  that  of 
Goethe.  Both  were  men  of  vast  learning.  Goethe  had 
a  wider  and  more  delicate  culture.  Rabelais  had,  what 
Goethe  greatly  lacked,  a  deeper  humor  than  any  other 
Frenchman,  and  one  of  the  richest  the  world  has  ever 
known.  So  the  expression  of  their  common  thought  is 
radically  different ;  but  both  believed  in  the  worth  of 
life,  and  that  that  worth  could  be  realized  and  en- 
hanced by  the  freest  development  of  the  whole  nature 
of  man,  unhampered  by  ascetic  or  other  artificial  tram- 
mels in  ethics  or  philosophy.  Yet  it  is  the  fate  of  the 


38  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

humorist  that  his  humor  should  mask  his  more  serious 
thought;  and  Kabelais,  while  he  has  been  admired 
by  many  and  imitated  by  a  few,  has  not  had  the  in- 
fluence on  the  thought  or  the  writing  of  later  genera- 
tions that  might  have  been  anticipated  from  his  great 
genins. 

But  while  Rabelais  was  thus  mocking  the  inconsis- 
tent follies  of  mankind,  a  group  of  talented  men  whom 
the  open-hearted  hospitality  of  Marguerite  (1492-1549) 
had  gathered  at  her  court,  was  developing,  by  the 
introduction  of  tragic  sympathy  and  artistic  finish,  the 
traditions  of  the  prose  fabliaux  so  well  inaugurated 
in  the  "  Cent  nouvelles  nouvelles. " 1  The  year  1558 
was  made  memorable  by  the  publication  of  the  "  Hep- 
tameron,"  which  sprang  from  the  immediate  circle 
of  that  royal  lady,  and  by  the  "  Joyeux  devis  "  of  Des 
Periers,  the  only  frank  skeptic  of  his  time,  whose 
"  Cymbalum  mundi  "  earned  him  a  persecution  that 
drove  him  at  last  to  suicide  (1544).  His  work  hardly 
marks  an  advance,  except  in  style,  on  De  la  Salle. 
The  anecdotes  are  short,  crisp,  witty,  but  with  no 
trace  of  growing  refinement  or  culture.  The  seventy- 
two  tales  of  the  "  Heptame'ron, "  on  the  other  hand,  are 
epoch-making  in  the  aesthetics  of  prose  fiction,  because 
they  join  to  the  joy  of  life  that  pulses  with  healthy 
vigor  through  all  the  early  pagan  renaissance,  a  refine- 
ment of  manners  and  morals  and  a  grace  of  conception 
that  belongs  rather  to  the  humanists,  and  a  delicacy 
of  observation  and  description  that  is  peculiarly  its 
own. 

Meantime  the  traditions  of  Rabelais  were  continued 
in  the  latter  half  of  the  century  by  the  "  Apologie  pour 

1  Nicolas  de  Troyes  and  Noel  du  Fail  are  still  earlier  imitators  of 
De  la  Salle,  but  intrinsically  of  less  importance. 


MIDDLE   AGE   AND   KENASCENCE.  39 

Hdrodote  "  of  the  scholarly  Henri  Estienne, 1  a  very 
amusing  attack  on  the  clergy  of  the  time  that  did 
much  to  aid  in  fixing  the  classical  language  of  the  next 
century.  Then,  as  a  belated  fruit  of  this  epoch,  there 
appeared,  in  1610,  Beroald  de  Verville's  "  Moyen  de 
parvenir, "  a  curious  mixture  of  wit,  learning,  and  vul- 
garity, with  a  plenteous  store  of  anecdotes  that  might 
have  furnished  him  with  another  "  Cent  nouvelles  "  if 
he  had  not  preferred  to  strew  them  in  the  freakish 
dialogue  of  his  mad  fratrasie.  Between  him  and  Des 
Pdriers,  both  in  style  and  time,  is  the  Abbe*  de  Bran- 
tome  (1540-1614),  ostensibly  a  writer  of  contemporary 
biography,  but  really  a  laughing  collector  of  piquant 
and  scandalous  stories  of  the  dames  de  par  le  monde, 
told  with  great  gusto  and  considerable  power  of  char- 
acter painting,  so  that  his  works  are  reprinted  and  still 
read. 

Prose  satire  first  at  this  period  became  an  important 
political  weapon  in  the  "  Me'nippe'e,"  that  several  lib- 
eral and  patriotic  Catholics  directed  against  the  League 
and  its  desperate  defence  of  Paris  in  1593  ;  while  in  his 
"  Essays  "  Montaigne  had  already  created  a  new  type  of 
prose  writing  that  has  gained  little  at  the  hands  of  his 
successors,  for  the  inventor  of  the  essay  is  still  the 
most  popular  essayist. 

The  exuberant  hopes  of  the  pagan  renaissance,  as 
they  appeared  in  the  joyous  nature-worship  of  Eabelais, 
had  not  been  fulfilled,  and  to  that  period  of  generous 
expansion  there  had  succeeded  a  reaction  to  easy  egoism 
and  unaggressive  skepticism.  This  is  the  temper  in 

1  Otherwise  known  as  Henry  Stephens,  from  his  association  with 
the  English  reformers  in  1550.  He  was  the  most  illustrious  of  a  fa- 
mous family  of  French  scholars  and  printers.  See  Encyc.  Brit.,  xxii. 
534  sqq. 


40  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

which  Montaigne  chooses  the  devices  "What  do  I 
know  ? "  and  "  What  does  it  matter  ?  "  He  had  been  a 
boy  of  scholarly  and  sedentary  tastes,  and  carefully 
trained  in  the  classics.  His  manhood,  though  un- 
eventful, was  such  as  to  bring  him  in  contact  with  all 
phases  of  life ;  and  his  ripe  experience  has  as  its  fruit 
the  "  Essays,"  of  which  two  books  appeared  in  1580, 
and  the  more  important  third  book  in  1588.  No 
French  work  has  exercised  so  great  and  lasting  an  influ- 
ence on  the  writing  and  thought  of  the  world.1  Mon- 
taigne here  inaugurates  the  literature  of  the  public 
confessional,  of  loquacious  egotism.  His  "  Essays " 
are  indeed,  as  he  says,  "  a  book  of  good  faith. "  He 
takes  us  into  his  confidence,  and  rambles  on  in 
delicious  and  not  unmethodical  desultoriness.  The 
essays  sprang,  no  doubt,  from  such  note-books  as 
scholarly  men  used  to  keep  in  that  age,  arid  gradually 
rounded  themselves  into  their  present  form  from  a  few 
connected  thoughts.  In  the  last  series,  however, 
there  is  far  more  conscious  composition,  and  these 
essays  are  nearly  four  times  as  long  as  the  earlier  ones. 
The  subjects  are  very  varied,  and  the  titles  are  often 
mere  pegs  to  hang  ideas  upon.  There  is  not  much 
about  Virgil  nor  even  about  Latin  poetry  in  the  essay 
on  the  "  Verses  of  Virgil, "  and  there  is  still  less  about 
coaches  in  "  Des  Coches.  "  Nowhere  is  there  any  trace 
of  searching  for  subject  or  effect.  He  notes  what  comes 
into  his  mind,  and  as  it  comes ;  he  tells  us  what  he 
thinks  about  what  happens  to  interest  him.  His  work 
has  all  the  charm  of  nature  and  not  a  little  of  hidden 
art.2 

1  Montesquieu's  "  Spirit  of  Laws  "  had  more  influence  on  politics, 
and  Rousseau's  novels  on  the  feelings  and  life  of  two  generations. 

2  Montaigne  was  translated   into  English  by  Florio  in  time  to  be 
used  by  Shakspere,  and  Florio  has  had  many  and  distinguished  sue- 


MIDDLE  AGE   AND   RENASCENCE.  41 

In  his  style  and  vocabulary  Montaigne  profited  by 
Ronsard,  but  he  was  no  blind  follower.  He  saw  the 
danger  of  indiscriminate  innovation.  "  Keen  minds  " 
he  says,  "  bring  no  new  words  into  the  language,  but 
with  a  cautious  ingenuity  they  apply  to  it  unaccus- 
tomed mutations.  And, "  he  adds  in  words  that  might 
apply  as  well  to  the  symbolists  of  our  day  as  to  the 
rhetoriqueurs  of  his  own,  "  how  little  it  is  in  the 
power  of  all  to  do  this  appears  in  very  many  French 
writers  of  this  century.  They  are  bold  enough  and 
disdain  to  follow  the  beaten  track;  but  lack  of 
invention  and  of  discretion  ruins  them.  Their  work 
reveals  only  a  wretched  affectation  of  singularity,  with 
cold  and  absurd  metaphors  that  amuse  rather  than 
elevate  their  subject.  If  only  such  men  can  gorge 
themselves  with  what  is  novel,  they  are  indifferent  to 
what  is  effective.  To  seize  the  new  they  will  abandon 
the  usual,  which  is  often  the  stronger  and  the  more 
vigorous. " 

It  cannot  be  denied  that  Montaigne's  average  prose 
is  better  than  the  average  prose  of  Ronsard,  and  his 
best  is  almost  the  best  that  France  has  to  show. 
Naturally,  therefore,  it  was  the  subject  of  narrow  criti- 
cism by  Malherbe  and  the  early  Academicians.  But 
while  Balzac  and  Vaugelas  fettered  and  puttered,  and 
while  Boileau  taught  the  French  muse  to  pick  her 
cautious  way  along  the  strait  and  narrow  path  of 
his  coldly  objective  classicism,  while  the  Pleiad 
was  discredited  and  Eonsard  forgotten  save  by  La 
Bruyere,  the  naturalists  of  the  sixteenth  century  lived 
stubbornly  on.  Rabelais  and  Montaigne  were  still 

cessors.  On  Montaigne  there  is  an  essay  in  Emerson's  "  Representative 
Men"  and  two  excellent  books  by  Paul  Stapfer, —  "  Montaigne,"  in  the 
Grands  tfcrivains  fran$ais,  and  "  LaFamille  et  les  amis  de  Montaigne." 


42  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

widely  read,  and  their  unfettered  independence  did 
much  to  shorten  the  triumph  of  literary  absolutism, 
just  as  the  tendency  of  their  thought  contributed  to 
shorten  the  reign  of  political  tyranny.  It  was  not 
until  wise  rules  had  been  broken  together  with  cramp- 
ing fetters  by  the  Eomantic  revolt  that  Konsard  was 
restored  to  honor  by  precisely  that  movement  in 
French  literature  with  which  he  has  least  in  common ; 
but  no  revolution  of  taste  or  criticism  has  ever  shaken 
the  universal  recognition  of  the  greatness  of  Rabelais 
and  Montaigne. 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          43 


CHAPTEE  II. 

THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.1 

"  AT  last  Malherbe  came. "  With  these  words  or  this 
thought  it  has  been  customary,  ever  since  Boileau's 
time,  to  begin  the  study  of  the  classical  century  of 
French  literature.  According  to  him,  Malherbe  was 
first  in  France  to  introduce  a  correct  cadence  into 
prosody.  He  first  "  taught  the  force  of  a  rightly 
placed  word,  and  brought  back  the  muse  to  the  rules  of 
duty.  "  He  improved  the  language  so  that  "  it  offered 
nothing  rude  to  the  cultured  ear ; "  he  banished  en- 
jambement,  or  the  interlocking  of  verses,  and  "  taught 
stanzas  to  close  with  grace.  "  2  This  appreciation  by 
one  mediocre  artisan  in  verse  of  the  merits  of  another, 
if  perhaps  not  altogether  "  false  in  fact  and  imbecile 
in  criticism, "  is  certainly  a  great  exaggeration ;  but  it 
represents  fairly  enough  the  sentiment  of  the  age  of 

1  There  is  helpful  criticism  for  the  period  covered  by  this  chapter 
in  Petit  de  Julleville,  Histoire  de  la  langue  et  de  la  litte'rature  franchise, 
vol.  iii. ;  F^aguetj,  xyii.  siecle ;  Brunetiere,  Etudes  critiques  and  Evolution 
des  genres ;  Le  Breton,  Le  Roman  au  xvii.  siecle  ;  Morillot,  Le  Roman 
en  France;  Lanson,  Litte'rature  franc. aise;  and  Korting,  Geschichte  des 
f  ranzosischen  Romans  im  XVII  Jahrhunderts. 

2  Malherbe,  b.  1556,  d.  1628.     Boileau's  lines  paraphrased  above 
are :  — 

Enfin  Malherbe  vint,  et  le  premier  en  France, 
Fit  sentir  dans  les  vers  une  juste  cadence, 
D'un  mot  mis  a  sa  place  enseigna  le  pouvoir, 
Et  reduisit  la  muse  aux  r6gles  du  devoir. 
Par  ce  page  (''crivain  la  langue  prdpare"e 
N'offrit  plus  rien  de  rude  a  1'oreille  e'pure'e. 


44  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Louis  XIV. ,  while  the  fateful  error  it  involved  was 
portentous  to  French  lyric  poetry  for  more  than  two 
centuries  of  pseudo-classical  artificiality  and  stagna- 
tion. The  qualities  on  which  Boileau  insists  are  met- 
rical polish,  meticulous  accuracy  in  rhymes,  greater 
diligence  in  the  rhetorical  arrangement,  and  a  more 
anxious  care  in  the  choice  of  words,  the  whole  joining 
in  what  might  be  justly  described  as  a  zealous  and  un- 
tiring pursuit  of  the  commonplace..  As  might  be  an- 
ticipated, then,  Malherbe  will  never  shock,  but  he 
will  never  thrill.  There  is  no  flash  of  genius  in  the 
poems,  and,  so  far  as  can  be  seen,  there  was  none  in 
the  man.  Why,  then,  were  these  qualities,  that  fifty 
years  before  would  not  have  raised  a  poet  above  name- 
less mediocrity,  capable  of  making  a  leader  in  1600  ? 
What  peculiar  conjuncture  made  readers  turn  from 
the  kernel  to  the  husk  ?  What  suffered  the  genius  of 
Regnier  to  be  a  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness,  while 
a  vastly  inferior  poet  became  the  prophet  of  successive 
generations  till  the  Revolution  came  to  make  all  things 
new? 

To  understand  this  aberration  of  aesthetic  taste 
we  must  look  beyond  literature  to  the  political  and 
religious  world.  The  renaissance  had  been  a  period 
of  unrest,  of  reaching  out  in  untried  directions  of  ten- 
tative effort,  of  a  confident  iconoclasm,  too,  and  of 
strongly  developed  individualism.  This  is  the  spirit 
of  the  earlier  half  of  the  sixteenth  century.  Then 
follows  a  growing  lack  of  faith  in  the  new  learning 
as  a  panacea  for  human  ills ;  but  as  yet  there  is  no 
loss  of  individuality.  Each  writer  strikes  out  on  his 
own  line,  cares  little  for  precedent  or  law  in  language 
or  metre,  so  that  he  can  say  what  he  has  in  him  to 
say.  Originality  is  more  prized  than  correct  diction, 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          45 

strength  than  polish.  So  while  these  men  left  admi- 
rable work  behind  them,  each  writer's  legacy  to  the 
world  was  stamped  with  a  singularity  that  made  it 
little  adapted  to  form  a  school  or  train  a  succession. 
The  renaissance  had  sacrificed  the  old  principle  of 
authority  to  freedom  of  inquiry  in  many  departments 
of  intellectual  and  ethical  life.  In  literature  this  free- 
dom resulted  in  a  division  of  energy,  remarkable  in  its 
immediate  results,  but  without  promise  of  healthy 
development  and  continuous  growth. 

By  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century  the  reaction 
came.  The  wars  of  the  League  had  been  a  cruel  de- 
ception to  the  high-strung  hopes  of  a  new  era  of  peace 
and  good-will,  the  sphere  of  human  knowledge  had 
been  widened  beyond  the  hope  of  individual  grasp, 
and  the  limitation  of  the  mind  was  brought  home  to 
it  with  crushing  weight.  The  intellectual  lassitude 
that  resulted  found  its  expression  in  criticism  rather 
than  in  fresh  creation.  Save  Eegnier,  who  appears  as 
one  born  out  of  due  time,  the  first  half  of  the  seven- 
teenth century  shows  no  great  lyric  or  epic  poet ;  and 
when  at  last  La  Fontaine  appears,  he  is  a  very  enfant 
terrible  to  his  contemporary  critics,  who  praise  his 
defects  and  bear  with  his  virtues.  In  prose,  too,  the 
best  work  is  critical  and  analytic.  The  drama,  because 
more  directly  in  touch  with  the  people,  preserved  a 
more  independent  life,  yielding  least  and  latest.  But 
Malherbe  expressed  the  state  of  mind  of  the  cultured 
men  of  the  time ;  he  is  the  herald  of  what  is  typical 
in  the  classical  school,  the  "  Age  of  Louis  XIV.  "  His 
poetry  was  an  art ;  it  could  be  learned,  weighed,  meas- 
ured. You  could  calculate  the  percentages  of  imperfect 
or  cognate  rhymes,  of  incorrect  verses,  of  words  and 
phrases  that  presumed  to  stir  the  mind  from  a  becom- 


46  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

ing  balance  of  calm  repose.  This  age  understood  this 
poetry ;  but  when  it  saw  these  very  qualities  trans- 
fused by  the  fire  of  Eonsard's  genius,  who  had  done 
all  that  was  ever  claimed  for  his  pedantic  successor, 
that  was  an  individuality  that  defied  mechanical  criti- 
cism, and  wearied  minds  already  predisposed  to  make 
great  sacrifices  for  order  and  propriety  in  the  state, 
and  in  literature  also.  This  temper  of  mind,  that 
prefers  order  and  rule  to  originality  and  individual- 
ism, begins  to  dominate  the  literature  of  France  with 
Malherbe ;  and  it  exercised  an  almost  undisputed 
authority  for  good  and  ill  till  the  Eomantic  revolt 
in  the  third  decade  of  our  century.  "  The  rule  of 
rules  becomes  to  resemble  one  another. " 

So  the  lyric  innovations  of  the  Pleiad  were  obscured, 
and  its  pedantry  superseded  by  a  studied  rhetorical 
impersonality,  against  which  Eegnier  fought  a  losing 
fight,  though  his  satires  are  among  the  most  vigorous 
that  French  literature  has  to  show,  and  contain  a 
powerful  attack  on  Malherbe  and  the  upas-tree  of 
his  overweening  criticism.  Several  of  Ee*gnier's  short 
poems  are  delightful  in  their  pathos  or  graceful  wit. 
Malherbe's  merit,  on  the  other  hand,  is  almost  wholly 
formal.  He  crystallized  the  language  into  its  classical 
form.  He  strove  to  the  best  of  his  ability  to  prune  its 
unfruitful  shoots  without  impoverishing  its  vital  force, 
and  in  this  effort  he  ranked  logical  clearness  above  all 
other  qualities.  Thus  he  sacrificed  the  lyric  and] 
Italian  element  in  the  Pleiad  to  eloquence.  He  aimed; 
to  give  to  the  luxuriant  but  irregular  phraseology  and 
prosody  of  his  predecessors  artistic  restraints  that  could 
not  fail  to  further  the  development  of  literary  form, 
though  Malherbe's  worth  appears  rather  in  the  work  of 
his  successors  than  in  his  own.  Indeed,  he  wrote 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          47 

very  little,  for  the  most  part  occasional  verses  addressed 
to  the  court  or  aristocracy ;  but  it  is  hard  to  read  that 
little  without  weariness  at  a  mediocrity  whose  great 
fault  is  that  it  has  not  virility  enough  to  err.  Per- 
sonally his  biographer  and  pupil,  Eacan,  shows  him  as 
a  man  of  petty  and  presumptuous  arrogance, —  a  quality 
illustrated  by  his  attitude  toward  Eonsard,  whom  he 
first  plundered  of  all  that  he  was  capable  of  valuing 
and  then  mocked  with  systematic  depreciation.  The 
spark  that  helps  some  of  his  verses,  for  instance  the 
"  Ode  of  Consolation, "  to  an  asthmatic  life  is  Eonsard 's ; 
the  spirit  that  insists  on  rhyming  for  eye  as  well  as 
ear,  fhat  forbids  the  linking  of  words  etymologically 
connected  or  of  proper  nouns,  that  seeks  curiously,  as 
his  biographer  tells  us,  "  for  rare  and  sterile  rhymes, " — 
that  spirit  is  all  his  own.  And  yet  perhaps  this 
very  exaggeration  of  correctness  was  a  necessary  protest 
against  the  careless  negligence  of  genius,  and  an  essen- 
tial prelude  to  the  more  studied  harmonies  and  the 
more  artistic  liberties  of  the  great  poets  of  the  last 
century.  Without  Malherbe  we  can  conceive  perhaps 
of  Verlaine,  but  hardly  of  Lamartine,  of  Hugo,  or  of 
Leconte  de  Lisle.- 

Malherbe 's  "  Art  of  Poetry, "  like  that  of  the  "  Meis- 
tersinger  "  in  Germany,  was  something  that  could  be 
taught  on  a  tally -board;  and  he  had  worthy  disciples, 
artisans  in  verse  such  as  Maynard,  Eacan,  with  some 
true  poetic  gift  and  a  more  genuine  appreciation  of 
nature,  Voiture,  a  graceful  but  "  idle  singer  of  an 
empty  day, "  the  anacreontic  Saint- Amant,  and  others 
whose  names  are  shadows.  All  of  these  suffered  from 
the  artificial  conceits  that  the  literary  lights  of  the 
Hotel  Eambouillet  had  brought  into  fashion.  But 
the  muse  that  had  been  thus  "  brought  back  to  the 


48  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

rules  of  duty  "  was  presently  to  be  drilled  in  them  by 
a  master  of  deportment  more  strict  than  Malherbe  had 
ever  been.  This  man  who  did  most  to  clip  the  wings 
of  the  French  Pegasus  was  Boileau  (1636-1711),  a 
pedantic  Parisian  bourgeois,  whose  critical  obiter  dicta 
were  long  regarded  as  sacred  by  French  critics  and 
French  schoolmasters.  He  was  fairly  acquainted 
with  Latin,  and  his  lack  of  familiarity  with  the  Greek 
poets  may  be  excused  by  his  obvious  inability  to  appre- 
ciate them ;  though  in  the  curious  controversy  between 
the  Ancients  and  Moderns  that  marked  the  close  of  the 
century  in  France,  and  found  its  echo  in  the  pamphlet 
warfare  of  Bentley  and  Temple  in  England,  he  loudly 
proclaimed  the  superiority  of  the  Ancients,  and  ranged 
himself  with  the  Cartesians  in  opposition  to  the 
renaissance  spirit.  The  order  and  self-restraint  of 
the  classical  aesthetics  attracted  his  scientific  mind ; 
but  he  never  thoroughly  grasped  the  fundamental 
principles  of  Greek  literary  art,  and  his  indifference  to 
the  contemporary  literatures  of  other  countries  was  par- 
alleled only  by  his  ignorance  of  the  earlier  writers  of 
his  own.  He  did  not  conceive  his  critical  canons  as 
relative  to  his  time  and  his  environment,  but  as  abso- 
lute for  all  times  and  all  races,  and  hence  he  felt  that 
he  could  neglect  the  past  without  loss.  Still,  if 
Boileau  lacked  a  pure  and  catholic  taste,  he  had  much 
honest  and  loyal  though  stubborn  and  rough  good 
sense,  which  he  savored  with  a  little  epicurean  real- 
ism that  made  his  destructive  criticism  of  hisprecieux 
contemporaries  usually  just,  though  it  may  have  been 
unnecessary.  Especially  should  one  hold  in  grateful 
remembrance  the  quietus  given  to  the  ghost  of  chival- 
rous romance  by  his  "  Dialogue  sur  les  he'ros,  "  though 
there  had  not  been  much  real  life  in  that  monstrosity 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          49 

since  the  "  Roman  comique  "  of  Scarron.  He  did  in- 
deed guide  the  next  generation  to  a  true  if  narrow 
naturalism ;  and  though  he  formulated  rather  than 
inspired  the  dramatic  art  of  Moliere  and  Kacine,  he 
did  much  to  direct  their  talent  as  well  as  that  of  La 
Fontaine  to  its  most  fruitful  channels.  He  was  the 
dogmatist  of  the  school  of  1660 ;  and  it  was  his  sound 
common-sense,  more  perhaps  than  any  other  one  thing, 
that  spread  and  prolonged  its  influence. 

The  positive  effect  of  Boileau's  criticism  was,  how- 
ever, deadening  and  narrowing.1  His  rationalistic 
and  Cartesian  adaptation  of  Horace's  "  Ars  poetica  " 
proclaimed  with  sufficient  talent  to  persuade  a  degen- 
erating taste  that  poetry  was  artificiality  raised  to  a 
science.  He  imposed  upon  many  men  of  no  genius, 
and  perhaps  stifled  the  genius  of  some ;  his  only  great 
scholar  who  gained  by  the  teaching  was  Eacine.  For 
his  talent  could  profit  by  instructions  that  would  have 
trammelled  Corneille  and  amused  Moliere. 

A  few  lines  from  Boileau's  "  Art  of  Poetry  "  will 
serve  to  suggest  his  spirit.  In  tragedy  it  is  essential, 
he  says,  — 

Qu'en  un  lieu,  qu'en  un  jour,  un  seul  fait  accompli 
Tienne  j  usqu'a  la  fin  le  theatre  rempli. 

And  then  it  must  not  have  a  Christian  basis,  for 

De  la  foi  d'un  chretien  les  mysteres  terribles 
D'ornements  egayes  ne  sont  pas  susceptibles. 

Even  in  comedy  we  must  have  no  naturalistic  studies. 
This  is  to  his  mind  the  great  error  of  Moliere,  who 

1  Boileau's  descriptive  verses  suggest  to  Lanson  (p.  483)  an  "  un- 
sentimental Coppee."  Sainte-Beuve  finds  in  his  poems  courage  and 
audacity,  but  never  truth.  Cp.  "  Nineteenth  Century,"  December,  1881. 

4 


50  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

Peut-etre  de  son  art  eut  reniporte  le  prix 

Si,  inoins  ami  du  peuple,  en  ses  doctes  peintures 

11  n'eut  pas  fait  souvent  grimacer  ses  figures. 

Bather  than  study  the  vulgar  foibles  of  mankind,  we 
should  "  imitons  de  Marot  relevant  badinage,"  for  ele- 
gance of  language  is  a  prime  and  universal  necessity  : 

Sans  la  langue,  en  un  mot,  1'auteur  le  plus  divin 
Est  toujours,  quoiqu'il  fasse,  un  inechaut  ecrivain. 

And  if  you  would  be  a  good  writer  of  alexandrines, 
your  main  care  should  be 

Que  toujours  dans  vos  vers  le  sens  coupant  les  mots 
Suspende  I'hemisticke,  en  inarque  le  repos. 

Now,  Boileau's  postulate  was  sound  enough. 
"  Beauty  is  truth,  and  truth  is  nature. "  Hence  let 
nature  be  the  sole  study.  "  Tout  doit  tendre  au  bon 
sens, "  —  everything  must  tend  to  sober  common-sense ; 
there  should  be  no  vagaries  of  genius.  And  in  all 
this  Boileau  was  perfectly  sincere ;  only  to  him 
"  nature  "  was  a  very  narrow  segment  of  the  sphere 
seen  through  glasses  that  both  colored  and  distorted 
it.  His  "  nature  "  is  only  what  is  typical,  universal ; 
and  his  method  of  attaining  it  is  imitation  of  classical 
models  and  a  careful  distinction  of  the  classical  genres. 
He  applied  to  form  the  same  principles  as  to  substance. 
Here,  too,  he  would  have  no  freaks,  and  novelty  was 
condemned  without  a  hearing.  Technique  to  Boileau 
is  second,  and  hardly  second,  to  inspiration  ;  and  since 
formal  technique  tends  to  stifle  inspiration,  Boileau's 
teaching  was  progressively  deadening  to  the  succeeding 
generations. 

As  different  from  Boileau  as  a  winding  woodland 
stream  from  a  well-kept  canal  is  La  Fontaine,  a  true 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          51 

and  naturalistic  poet,  who  calmly  ignored  the  tradi- 
tional rules  of  his  art  and  won  the  hearts  of  critics 
who  shook  their  heads.  It  was  impossible  to  deny 
his  wit  and  winning  grace ;  and  the  unambitious  fable 
or  tale  in  which  he  clothed  them  seemed  to  harbor 
a  less  dangerous  license  than  more  serious  efforts 
would  have  done.  The  court  and  its  critics  could 
pardon  the  frailty  of  a  sylvan  muse,  when  they  would 
have  been  pitiless  to  an  error  of  Melpomene.  So  La 
Fontaine  preserved  and  handed  down  the  tradition  of 
metrical  liberty  to  the  Komantic  poets  of  1830. 

La  Fontaine's  first  work  of  importance,  the  first 
book  of  his  "  Contes,"  dates  from  1664  and  his  forty- 
third  year.  Already  he  had  become  socially  popular, 
and  had  been  intimately  associated  with  Boileau, 
Moliere,  and  Eacine.  More  "Contes"  (1666)  were 
followed  by  "  Fables  "  (1668) ;  and  the  year  1671  shows 
his  versatile  genius  as  editor  of  a  volume  of  mystically 
religious  verse,  as  author  of  "Contes,"  whose  humor 
was  very  unrestrained,  and  of  "  Fables, "  whose  equal 
humor  was  quite  without  this  gallic  spice.  These 
seven  years  were  the  best  fruitage  of  his  long,  easy, 
and  irresponsible  life.  For  La  Fontaine  seems  never 
to  have  quite  outlived  the  carelessness  of  childhood,  — 
a  trait  that  impressed  all  his  friends,  and  is  reflected 
in  the  words  with  which  Louis  licensed  his  election  to 
the  Academy  (1683)  :  "  II  a  promis  d'etre  sage.  "  After 
this  he  wrote  only  "  Fables. "  His  friends  took  care 
of  him  when  his  wife  declined  the  burden.  He  died, 
after  a  tardy  conversion  to  the  religiosity  that  the 
aged  Louis  had  made  popular,  in  1695.  Endless  anec- 
dotes tell  of  his  guileless  simplicity  and  absent- 
mindedness.  His  intimates  called  him  the  "  good 
fellow. "  Of  them  all  Moliere  alone,  perhaps,  justly 


52  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

appreciated  his  literary  importance.  "  Our  wits  labor 
in  vain;  they  will  not  outlive  the  bonhomme,"  he 
said  when  once  he  overheard  Boileau  and  Eacine 
chaffing  their  common  friend.  And  he  was  right,  for 
he  has  always  been  more  read  than  either  of  them ;  and 
as  time  goes  on,  it  is  felt  that  he  was  of  greater  service 
than  they,  —  a  consummation  doubtless  very  far  from 
the  dreams  of  either  the  critic  or  the  tragedian. 

The  "  Fables  "  and  the  "  Contes  *  have  exercised  a 
deep  and  permanent  influence  both  on  French  litera- 
ture arid  on  our  own.  La  Fontaine's  miscellaneous 
work,1  though  often  good,  is  less  individual  and  little 
read.  His  "  Contes  "  are  essentially  fabliaux  devel- 
oped by  a  studied  prosody  and  delicate  feeling  for 
style,  coupled  with  a  skill  in  narration  that  is  the 
height  of  art  in  its  apparent  ease  and  naturalness. 
He  is  the  true  contirmator  of  De  la  Salle,  of  Des 
Pe*riers,  and  of  Marguerite.  Now,  neither  he,  nor 
they,  nor  their  Italian  fellows,  recognized  what  we 
to-day  hold  to  be  fundamental  conventions  of  decency. 
Their  stories  deal  very  largely  with  subjects  not  now 
admitted  to  polite  literary  circles,  but  then  regarded  as 
not  unbecoming  even  by  such  irreproachable  ladies  as 
Madame  de  Se'vigne'.  The  same  thing  is  observable 
in  English  literature.  If  these  "  Contes  "  are  to  be 
read  at  all,  it  must  be  in  the  simple,  naive  spirit  in 
which  they  were  written.  There  is  no  sniggering  about 
them,  no  conscious  pandering  to  vice.  They  represent 
a  phase  in  the  development  of  European  morals, 
which  we  may  describe  as  the  persistence  of  the  hedon- 

1  Hemon,  CEuvres  diverses  de  la  Fontaine,  gives  the  best  of  these, 
notably  the  "  Voyage  en  Limousin  "  and  the  prose  version  of  "  Psyche," 
that  for  its  charming  grace  of  style  may  rank  with  the  best  prose  of 
Fe'nelon  and  Madame  de  Sevigne. 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          53 

istic  revolt  of  the  renaissance  between  the  old  faith  and 
the  new  Cartesian  philosophy.1  It  is  no  longer  the 
lusty  joy  of  life  that  pulsed  in  Boccaccio  and  in  Kabe- 
lais,  with  their  eager  love  of  sense  and  beauty  after 
centuries  of  ascetic  repression,  nor  yet  the  "  subtle 
mixture  of  passion  and  sensuality,  of  poetry  and  appe- 
tite, "  that  we  find  in  Marguerite  and  Eonsard.  The 
renaissance  was  no  longer  a  revolutionary  force,  and 
what  was  a  passionate  cult  to  Boccaccio  becomes  in  La 
Fontaine  the  elfish  naturalism  of  a  satyr  child.  Bead 
in  the  spirit  of  the  writer,  the  "  Contes  "  are  charming ; 
but  it  may  be  admitted  that  it  is  difficult  for  those  who 
have  inherited  the  traditions  of  Victorian  "  propriety  " 
to  read  the  Contes  without  offense  at  the  sensual  ele- 
ment in  their  gayety.  Yet  we  have  no  right  to  judge 
the  work  of  one  century  by  the  moral  standards  of 
another.  We  may  fix  the  distinction.  We  need  not 
draw  a  comparison. 

There  is  no  need  of  any  such  reserve,  however,  when 
we  turn  to  the  "  Fables.  "  They  were,  are,  and  always 
will  be,  wholly  delightful  in  the  graceful  liveliness  of 
their  narration,  in  the  restrained  naturalism  of  their 
art  and  the  homely  worldly  wisdom  of  their  unobtru- 
sive moral.  One  knows  not  whether  to  admire  most 
the  varied  mastery  of  the  form,  the  accurate  analysis 
and  observation  of  human  nature,  or  the  boldness  with 
which,  in  the  later  books,  he  uses  the  fable  as  a  cover 
for  political  teaching  that  is  sometimes  startlingly 
radical.  As  Saintsbury  has  gracefully  said :  "  The 
child  rejoices  in  the  freshness  and  vividness  of  the 
story,  the  eager  student  of  literature  in  the  consum- 
mate art  with  which  it  is  told,  the  experienced  man 
of  the  world  in  the  subtle  reflections  on  character  and 

1  Cp.  Lanson,  p.  552. 


54  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

life  which  it  conveys. "  Thus,  in  a  double  sense,  these 
"  Fables  "  are  not  of  one  age,  but  for  all  ages,  and  for 
all  men,  except  it  be  poets  of  the  type  of  Lamartine, 
who  could  discern  only  "  limping,  disjointed,  unequal 
verses,  without  symmetry  either  in  the  ear  or  on  the 
page, "  in  stanzas  where  others  find  a  most  original  and 
studied  harmony.1 

The  "  Fables  "  of  La  Fontaine  are  familiar  to  every 
French  school-boy,  acquaintance  with  his  work  is  pre- 
sumed in  all  cultivated  society,  turns  of  expression  and 
phrases  taken  from  them  fall  as  naturally  from  the 
lips  and  pens  of  educated  Frenchmen  as  biblical 
phrases  did,  and  perhaps  still  do,  from  New  England 
Puritans.  The  universal  acquaintance  with  his  work 
influenced  and  aided  the  emancipation  of  poetry  by  the 
school  of  1830,  especially  among  those  who  still  did 
homage  to  Boileau  with  their  lips  though  their  hearts 
were  elsewhere.  For  La  Fontaine  is  very  great,  per- 
haps supreme ;  but  it  is  in  a  kind  of  poetry  that  is  not 
great.  Therefore,  though  he  is  the  best  fabulist  and 
best  story-teller  that  is  known  to  French  literature, 
he  is  not  a  great  poet.  But  he  is  the  one  poet  of  his 
century  whose  poetry  is  still  generally  read  and  en- 
joyed, while  Boileau 's  verses  are  studied  rather  as 
rhetorical  models  and  as  essays  in  criticism. 

It  was  natural  that  the  prose  of  the  early  part  of  the 
seventeenth  century  should  suffer  less  from  artificiality 
than  lyric  poetry,  the  most  sensitive  of  all  literary 
forms;  but  it  too  felt  the  reaction,  and  there  is 
nothing  to  recall  the  verve  of  Eabelais,  the  force  of 
Montaigne,  or  the  grace  of  Marguerite,  in  the  work 

1  Rousseau  and  his  age  cared  too  much  for  their  " state  of  nature" 
to  care  for  La  Fontaine,  but  Voltaire  toward  the  close  of  his  life  re- 
gretted the  strictures  of  his  youth.  See  his  letter  to  Chanifort. 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          55 

of  the  first  third  of  the  century.  In  fiction  the  changed 
spirit  shows  itself  in  the  influence  of  the  Italian  Pas- 
torals, and  in  imitations  of  those  Spanish  followers  of 
Gongora  who  were  the  chief  instigators  throughout 
Europe  of  the  style  known  to  English  students  as 
Euphuism.  This  studied  affectation  showed  itself  in 
France,  as  elsewhere,  chiefly  in  chivalrous  romances. 
The  immediate  model  was  the  Spanish  "  Amadis, "  that 
had  been  translated  late  in  the  sixteenth  century. 
Hence  these  novels  will  usually  be  named,  at  least  by 
readers^  of  Don  Quixote,  with  a  certain  mocking  shrug. 
TEeTbest  of  them  is  D'Urfe"s  "  AstreV'  whose  chilly 
heroine  tells  of  the  combat  in  her  soul  between  love 
and  reason,  of  which  the  linked  sweetness  is  prolonged 
through  some  five  thousand  pages,  during  which  her 
love-sick  Celadon  learns  to  know  himself  sufficiently 
to  discern  that  a  pastoral  lover  "  is  no  longer  man,  for 
he  has  cast  off  all  wit  and  judgment.  "  It  is  but  just 
to  say  that  Celadon's  foil,  the  inconstant  shepherd 
Hylas,  is  not  without  humor,  and  has  touches  of  quite 
modern  Hague.  "  Astrde  "  was  a  pastoral ;  the  "  Grand 
Cyrus"  and  "  Clelie  "  of  the  Scuddrys  pictured  modern 
society  under  the  thin  disguise  of  heroic  romance. 
Yet  it  is  only  with  amused  curiosity  that  one  notes 
to-day  the  ponderous  apparatus  of  their  elaborate 
allegory,  or  glances  at  the  explanatory  map  of  "  Ten- 
derland, "  with  its  rivers  of  Esteem,  Gratitude,  and 
Inclination,  its  villages  of  Attention,  Verses,  and 
Epistles,  its  lake  of  Indifference,  and  its  seas  of 
Enmity  and  Danger. 

In  their  day  D'tTrfe"  and  the  Scude'rys,  with  other 
similar  though  less  talented  novelists,1  were  immensely 
popular,  and  that  among  the  most  cultured  and  aris- 

1  E.  g.,  La  Calprencde,  Camus,  and  Gomberville. 


56  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

tocratic  class.  Indeed,  the  picture  of  society  that 
"  Astre'e  "  painted  was  the  inspiring  cause  of  the  first 
Parisian  salon,  which  met  at  the  Hotel  Kambouillet 
and  took  its  name  from  its  hostess.  The  raison  d'etre 
of  this  coterie,  like  that  of  Celadon  and  his  mistress, 
was  the  attrition  of  witty  conversation  in  an  exclusive 
society.  But  narrow  as  this  circle  was,  both  in  its 
principles  and  its  numbers,  it  exercised  a  very  impor- 
tant influence  on  the  whole  classical  period,  for  by  its 
unnatural  straining  after  rare  and  curious  conceits,  it 
interrupted  the  development  of  a  simple  and  direct 
style.  Thus  it  fostered  an  artificiality  that,  in  spite 
of  Moliere's  satire,  was  not  wholly  banished  from 
French  literature  till  the  rise  of  the  Romantic  School. 
But  so  far  as  the  pastoral  or  heroic  romance  was  con- 
cerned, if  the  disease  was  acute  the  remedy  was  speedy. 
The  analogy  of  other  literatures  would  lead  us  to  expect 
a  reaction  from  over-strained  sentiment  to  coarse  natu- 
ralism. Of  this  Sorel's  "  Francion "  had  given  a 
warning  sign  as  early  as  1622,  and  the  old  romances 
received  their  coup  de  grace  in  Scarron's  "  Roman 
comique  "  (1651),  that  drew  its  inspiration  from 
Rabelais  and  the  Spanish  novcla  picaresca,  and  found 
its  more  artistic  sequel  in  Le  Sago's  "  Gil  Bias. "  1  A 
more  independent  social  study  that  shows  the  influence 
of  the  realistic  school  of  1660  is  Furetiere's  "  Roman 
bourgeois  "  (1666),  a  collection  of  "  human  documents  " 
for  middle-class  Parisian  life.  Meantime  the  same 
careful  observation  was  being  directed  to  the  study  of 
individual  character  by  Madame  de  Lafayette,  who,  in 
"  Mile,  de  Montpensier, "  had  discovered  that  marriage 

1  The  corresponding  English  movement,  begun  by  Defoe  and  con- 
tinned  by  Smollett,  owes  much  to  both  Spanish  and  French  picaroon 
romancers. 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          57 

was  as  appropriate  as  courtship  for  artistic  treatment, 
and  furnished  in  her  exquisite  "  Princesse  de  Cleves  " 
(1678)  the  starting-point  of  the  psychological  novel  as 
distinct  from  romance.  But  the  critics  of  the  time 
were  far  from  appreciating  the  real  importance  of  this 
very  popular  book.  Indeed,  just  as  realism  was  thus 
announcing  its  advent  in  fiction,  the  court  coterie, 
attracted  by  La  Fontaine's  "  Cupid  and  Psyche,"  were 
seized  with  a  fancy  for  writing  prose  fables,  fairy  tales, 
of  which  a  vast  number  were  born  to  an  ephemeral  life 
during  the  closing  decades  of  the  century.  The  best 
in  this  shadowy  kind  is  Perrault,  the  French  god- 
father of  "  Puss-in  -Boots,"  of  "Red  Riding-Hood," 
"  The  Sleeping  Beauty, "  and  "  Tom  Thumb.  "  In  the 
next  century  this  style  was  continued  by  Hamilton  and 
many  others,  and  was  diverted  later  by  Voltaire  to 
political  and  philosophical  purposes,  and  to  ethical 
ones  by  Marmontel ;  while  the  "  Princesse  de  Cleves  " 
has  no  direct  literary  progeny. 

Outside  the  sphere  of  fiction  the  prose  of  the  century 
opens  with  Jean  de  Balzac,  a  rhetorical  and  pains- 
taking continuator  of  Montaigne,  who  did  much  to 
smooth  the  way  for  the  great  prose  writers  and  orators 
that  followed.  Aided  by  the  prestige  of  the  Hotel 
Rambouillet,  and  by  the  foundation  of  the  French 
Academy  (1634),  of  which  he  was  a  leading  member, 
he  set  deliberately  to  work  to  be  to  French  prose  the 
benefactor  that  he  conceived  Malherbe  to  have  been 
to  its  poetry  ;  but  his  work  had  value  only  as  a  stylistic 
model.  Not  so  the  limpid  directness  of  Descartes  and 
the  supple  strength  of  Pascal,  the  philosophers  who 
illustrate  this  period.  The  former's  "  Discourse  on 
Method  "  is  the  starting-point  in  France  of  a  developed, 
scientific,  argumentative  style ;  while  his  "  Treatise  on 


58  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

the  Passions  "  is  the  systematic  statement  of  the  psy- 
chological basis  of  Corneille's  tragedies,  whose  virile 
energy  of  will  contrasts  with  the  more  feminine  senti- 
ment of  Eacine  and  the  School  of  1660. 1  It  was  from 
Descartes  as  much  as  from  Balzac  that  Pascal  and  La 
Eochefoucauld  learned  their  marvellous  mastery  over 
language.  Pascal's  "  Pensdes, "  though  incomplete, 
are  as  clear  as  they  are  keen,  as  logical  as  they  are 
charming.  They  combine  the  mathematical  mind  with 
the  poet's  vision,  while  his  "  Provincial  Letters  " 
against  the  casuistry  of  the  Jesuits  remain  to  this  day 
an  unmatched  masterpiece  of  caustic  irony  and  crush- 
ing contempt,  clothed  in  a  style  of  which  one  knows 
not  whether  most  to  admire  the  graceful  energy  or  the 
brilliant  wit.  Pascal  is  the  leader  of  the  ascetic  reac- 
tion against  the  naturalism  of  the  sixteenth  century 
and  the  facile  ethics  of  Jesuit  casuists ;  he  is  also  the 
first  of  French  prose  writers  who  seems  thoroughly  at 
home  with  his  rhetorical  tools.  There  has  been  gradual 
adaptation  to  new  needs,  but  French  prose  has  made 
no  great  advance,  indeed  has  needed  to  make  none, 
from  his  day  to  ours. 

After  these  had  gone  before,  progress  became  easy  in 
other  lines.  So  De  Eetz's  "  Conspiracy  of  Fiesco  " 
marks  a  gain  in  picturesque  historical  description; 
while  his  lively,  keen,  and  piquant  "  Memoirs  "  show 
an  unscrupulous  will  and  a  pen  sharpened  by  use. 
The  worldly  wisdom  of  his  maxims  yields  only  to  the 
cruel  temper  of  La  Eochefoucauld's  cynical  satire. 
That  the  underlying  pessimism  of  these  men  is  fairly 
representative  of  a  general  state  of  mind,  is  clear  from 
the  reception  accorded  to  their  work.  La  Eochefou- 
cauld, especially,  marks  an  ethical  change  in  the  pop- 

1  Cp.  Lanson,  p.  393. 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          59 

ular  view  of  life  that  is  an  essential  prelude  to  the 
iconoclastic  optimism  of  the  next  century.  He  claims 
literary  notice,  however,  not  only  as  a  representative, 
but  as  an  individual.  Condemned  by  the  failure  of 
the  Fronde  to  retirement,  he  amused  himself  and  a 
witty  circle  of  friends,  with  the  luxury  of  an  aristo- 
cratic seigneur,  and  with  "  Memoirs  "  and  "  Maxims," 
in  which  he  pitilessly  unfolds  the  seamy  side  of  life. 
Personally  a  good  man,  affectionate  and  beloved,  he 
exhibits  here  the  consistent  and  scornful  pessimist; 
but  he  is  more  an  aristocrat  than  a  philosopher.  He 
cares  little  for  system  or  completeness  of  analysis. 
He  takes  up,  one  by  one,  such  ideas  as  come  to  him, 
and  uses  them,  with  prudent  reserves,  to  illustrate  his 
theory,  which  is,  briefly,  that  every  virtue  is  a  product 
of  vices,  while  these  are  resolvable  into  selfishness, 
"  in  which  all  virtues  are  lost  like  rivers  in  the  sea. " 
This  conclusion  does  not  excite  his  anger,  but  rather 
amuses  his  curiosity,  and  that  is  much  the  effect  it 
seems  to  have  had  on  contemporary  readers.  Its 
effect  on  literary  form  was  much  greater.  The  nature 
of  both  influences  will  appear  better  from  a  few  cita- 
tions than  from  any  brief  analysis  :  — 

Vice  enters  into  the  composition  of  virtues  just  as 
poisons  do  into  medicines.  Prudence  collects  and  tem- 
pers them,  and  uses  them  against  the  ills  of  life. 

People  think  sometimes  that  we  hate  flattery,  but  we 
hate  only  the  way  they  flatter. 

It  is  not  always  by  valor  that  men  are  valiant,  nor  by 
virtue  that  women  are  chaste. 

Men  would  not  live  long  in  society  if  they  were  not  one 
another's  dupes.  .  .  .  The  world  is  made  up  of  masks. 

Old  men  give  good  precepts  to  console  themselves  for 
being  no  longer  able  to  give  bad  examples. 


60  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Our  passions  are  the  only  orators  that  always  convince. 

If  we  resist  our  passions,  it  is  rather  by  their  weakness 
than  by  our  strength. 

We  all  have  strength  enough  to  bear  the  ills  of  others. 

If  we  had  no  pride,  we  should  not  complain  that  others 
had  it. 

We  easily  forget  our  faults  when  no  one  else  knows 
them.  .  .  .  We  try  to  be  proud  of  the  faults  that  we  do 
not  wish  to  forget. 

We  promise  according  to  our  hopes ;  we  keep  according 
to  our  fears. 

We  pardon  those  who  bore  us,  but  we  cannot  forgive 
those  whom  we  bore. 

The  spirit  that  animates  these  "  Maxims  "  can  be 
traced  in  Voltaire,  in  Stendhal,  and  most  clearly  in 
the  French  cynic,  Chamfort,  and  his  greater  succes- 
sor, the  German  Schopenhauer.  But  their  value  as 
literature  was  much  greater  and  wider ;  for  it  should 
be  clear,  even  from  what  has  been  cited,  that  in  these 
"  distilled  thoughts  "  French  prose  style  has  attained  a 
pregnant  terseness  comparable  only  to  the  best  verses 
of  Corneille.  As  Voltaire  said,  the  Maxims  "  accus- 
tomed men  to  think  and  to  express  their  thoughts 
with  a  lively,  precise,  delicate  turn;"  and  this  epi- 
grammatic quality  has  ever  since  been  a  characteristic 
of  the  best  writers  of  France. 

But  with  all  this  progress  in  various  directions 
French  prose  still  lacked  its  La  Fontaine,  its  easy, 
graceful  raconteur.  This  last  step  was  taken  in  the 
letters  of  Madame  de  Se'vigne  (1626-1696),  most 
charming  of  all  correspondents.  There  are  some  three 
thousand  of  her  letters,  addressed  for  the  most  part 
to  her  rather  unsympathetic  daughter  Madame  de 
Grignon,  and  to  her  gay  cousin,  Bussy-Kabutin,  author 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          61 

of  the  amusing  but  scandalous  "  Histoire  amoureuse  des 
Gaules.  "  In  her  younger  days  she  had  been  an  assid- 
uous frequenter  of  the  Hotel  Kambouillet,  but  she  was 
shrewd  enough  not  to  fall  into  the  va'garies  that  made 
its  blue-stockings  the  just  butt  of  Moliere.  Married 
in  1644,  she  was  left  a  widow  in  1651  with  a  son  and 
a  daughter,  and  after  three  years  of  retirement,  re- 
turned to  Paris  in  1654,  to  be  a  literary  leader  there 
for  nearly  forty  years.  It  is  not,  however,  till  after 
the  marriage  of  her  daughter,  in  1669,  that  the  corre- 
spondence begins  to  flow  freely  with  its  inexhaustible 
stream  of  court  news  and  town  talk,  varied  with  bril- 
liant reportorial  sketches  of  the  baths  of  Vichy.  The 
succession  of  letters  is  interrupted  only  by  rare  visits 
to  her  daughter,  and  continues  till  her  death.  With 
the  most  charming  naturalness  she  "  lets  her  pen  trot, 
bridle  on  the  neck, "  "  diverting  herself  as  much  in  a 
chat  with  her  as  she  labors  with  other  correspondents.  " 
To  her  daughter  she  gives,  as  she  says,  "  the  top  of  all 
the  baskets,  the  flowers  of  her  wit,  head,  eyes,  pen, 
style ;  and  the  rest  get  on  as  they  can. "  As  natural 
as  La  Fontaine,  she  is  a  model  correspondent,  wholly 
free  from  the  artificiality  of  Balzac,  or  even  from  that 
balanced  poise  that  in  another  field  added  to  the  glory 
of  Pascal,  and  was  the  chief  factor  in  that  of  Bossuet. 
For  the  ultimate  result  of  the  criticism  of  Balzac 
and  of  the  Academy,  of  Vaugelas,  and  the  Hotel  Eam- 
bouillet,  is  not  seen  in  La  Eochefoucauld,  nor  in 
Se'vigne',  but  in  the  elaborate  though  superficial  periods 
of  La  Bruyere's  "  Caracteres,  "  who  at  his  best  suggests 
Voltaire,  and  in  the  polished  orations  of  the  court 
preachers  of  Louis  XIV.,  whose  ambitious  energies 
were  roused  by  the  attitude  of  the  king  toward  Galli- 
can  liberties,  and  by  attacks  of  able  Protestants  and 
Jansenists.  Chief  among  them,  and  perhaps  the 


62  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

greatest  pulpit  orator  of  modern  times,  was  Bossuet 
(1627-1704),  whose  "  Oraisons  funebres "  and  histori- 
cal pamphlets  are  masterpieces  of  clear  directness  and 
plastic  art  drawn  from  a  literary  study  of  the  Bible ; 
while  the  suppler  Fdnelon  (1651-1715),  once  tutor  to  the 
Dauphin,  betrays  in  his  style  a  deeper  classical  study. 
His  "  Tdle'maque  "  was  long  a  model  of  style  for  almost 
all  foreign  students  of  French,  and  had  an  acceptance 
at  home  second  only  to  that  of  La  Fontaine's  "  Fables.  " 
It  is  refreshing  to  find  that  Fdnelon's  theory  was  even 
better  than  his  practice ;  for  he  felt  and  regretted  the 
restraints  to  which  he  yielded,  and  was  keen  enough 
to  prophesy  in  his  "  Letter  to  the  Academy  "  that  the 
only  result  of  such  trammels  to  literature  as  the  pur- 
ists were  striving  to  impose  must  be  poverty ;  and  dry 
rot,  such  as  the  close  of  the  century  was  to  see. l 

Other  great  preachers  of  the  time,  whose  names  are 
not  unknown  even  outside  France,  were  Massillon, 
Bourdaloue,  and  Fle'chier;  while  allied  to  them  in 
style  and  mode  of  thought  is  Malebranche,  whose 
chief  charm,  if  not  his  chief  merit,  is  a  language 
whose  picturesque  clearness  masks  the  misty  concep- 
tions that  it  irradiates.  He  marks  the  highest  devel- 
opment of  the  classical  style,  and  contrasts  in  this,  as 
in  his  philosophy,  with  his  contemporary  Bayle,  whose 
"  Dictionnaire  "  (1697)  was  to  the  "  Philosophers  "  of 
the  following  century  at  once  a  storehouse  of  most 
varied  learning  and  the  ironical  herald  of  their  skep- 
tical infidelity.2 

It  was  in  prose  that  the  language  of  1600  had  most 
needed  order  and  reform,  and  it  is  in  prose  that  the 

1  Lanson's  keen  analysis  of  Fe'nelon's  character  discovers  in  him  an 
egoistical  reactionary,  more  sentimental  than  logical,  who  had  much  in 
common  with  Rousseau,  for  whom  he  contributed  to  prepare  the  way. 

2  Cp.  Brunetiere,  Etudes  critiques,  iii.  182 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          63 

great  permanent  advance  was  gained  during  this  cen- 
tury. Yet  the  writers  who  have  left  the  deepest  im- 
press on  the  language  are  not  the  sententious  builders 
of  polished  periods,  but  those  who  with  true  artistic 
sense  aimed  only  to  make  prose  a  clear  and  limpid 
vehicle  of  thought.  A  great  gulf  separates  Sevigne' 
from  Montaigne ;  but  the  advance  was  not  due  to  the 
rhetoricians,  to  Balzac  and  Vaugelas,  nor  even  to  the 
orators,  but  to  the  thinkers  and  raconteurs,  who  each 
in  his  kind  had  something  to  say,  and  cared  less  for 
meticulous  correctness  than  for  clearness  and  point. 

No  form  of  literature  in  1600  promised  less  than 
the  drama.  At  the  end  of  the  century  it  had  become 
what  it  has  remained,  the  most  important  form  of 
French  literary  expression.  It  is,  therefore,  of  pecu- 
liar interest  to  see  whether  this  great  development  was 
due  to  the  classical  spirit  as  represented  by  Boileau  and 
the  critical  purists,  or  whether  their  influence  was  not 
rather  a  check  than  a  stimulus.  A  student  of  com- 
parative literature,  remembering  that  this  is  the  age 
of  Shakspere  and  Lope,  would  look  for  dramatic 
activity  in  France  also ;  and  in  the  first  thirty  years  of 
the  century,  while  the  lyric  muse  was  learning  her 
mincing  steps,  and  prose  was  beginning  to  substitute 
the  rapier  for  the  quarter-staff,  the  number  of  play- 
wrights bears  witness  to  the  growing  popularity  of  the 
drama,  due  in  great  degree  to  the  efforts  of  Hardy 
(1560-1631),  who  brought  the  stage  more  in  touch 
with  the  audience  than  had  been  possible  to  the 
classical  lucubrations  of  the  school  of  Jodelle. 

Hardy's  reforms  were  quite  independent  of  criticism, 
and  dictated  by  the  necessities  of  the  situation.  Him- 
self attached  to  a  dramatic  company  and  writing  plays 
to  be  acted  rather  than  read,  he  cared  less  for  scholarly 
than  for  popular  applause,  and  declined  with  a  light 


64  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

heart  the  heavy  burden  of  the  "  unities. "  Moreover, 
being  compelled  to  various  and  speedy  production,  he 
was  led  to  look  for  subjects  in  history  and  fiction,  old 
and  new.  With  some  aid  from  the  Italian,  but  prob- 
ably none  from  the  Spanish  stage,  he  dramatized  what- 
ever seemed  likely  to  suit  the  taste  of  his  plebeian 
audiences ;  and  so  he  introduced  to  the  French  theatre 
an  element  of  fresh  life  and  a  partial  naturalism  that 
acted  like  a  tonic,  and  induced  other  writers  of  more 
literary  culture  than  he  to  offer  their  pieces  to  his 
company.  One  cannot  but  regret  that  he  ignored  or 
feared  the  greater  freedom  of  the  English  stage,  whose 
traditions  would  have  been  of  priceless  service  to  Cor- 
neille  and  Moliere.  But  Hardy  was  no  imitator.  His 
virtues  were  due  to  his  dependence  on  the  healthy 
sense  of  the  theatre-going  masses ;  and  to  this,  too,  may 
be  attributed  his  chief  vice,  bombast  and  rhodomontade 
to  tickle  the  ears  of  the  groundlings, — a  weakness  from 
which  Shakspere  is  not  wholly  free. 

Hardy  died  in  1631,  a  year  memorable  in  the  annals 
of  the  French  stage,  for  it  saw  the  proclamation 1  of  the 
so-called  classical  unities  of  time,  place,  and  action. 
After  much  battling  and  varying  fortunes,  these  found 
favor  with  Eichelieu  in  1635,  and  by  1640  had  estab- 
lished their  fateful  and  exclusive  sway  in  French  trag- 
edy. This  minimizing  of  dramatic  conventions  suited 
the  rationalistic  and  unimaginative  spirit  of  the  pre- 
cieux  of  the  Hotel  Eambouillet,  who  now  began  to 
take  an  active  interest  in  the  drama,  and  saw  in  the 
"  unities  "  their  narrow  ideal  of  nature,  good-sense,  and 
rationality.  But  rules  that  were  proposed  in  the  interest 
of  greater  realism  were  destined  to  lead  before  the  close 
of  the  century  to  the  most  deadening  artificiality. 

1  By  Mairet  in  his  preface  to  "  Silvanire." 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          65 

The  battle  of  the  "  unities  "  had  been  preceded  by  the 
first  dramatic  work  both  of  Corneille  and  of  Eotrou. 
The  latter  produced  his  first  play  at  Hardy's  theatre 
while  still  a  genial  youth  of  nineteen  (1628),  and 
presently  joined  the  dramatic  collaborators  of  Cardinal 
Eichelieu,  where  Corneille  was  his  associate,  his  friend, 
and,  though  only  three  years  his  senior,  finally  his 
master.  Eotrou 's  really  excellent  work  followed  and 
was  obscured  by  the  greater  glories  of  Corneille  ;  but  it 
is  worth  noting  that  in  his  "  Saint-Genest "  (1646)  he 
imitated  Corneille 's  favorite  "  Polyeucte  "  (1643),  in 
treating  on  the  stage  a  Christian  conversion  and  mar- 
tyrdom, quite  in  accord  with  the  origins  of  the  French 
drama,  but  contradicting  more  recent  traditions  and 
arousing  the  futile  anger  of  the  purists. 

Corneille,  if  not  the  greatest,  is  the  first  in  time  of 
the  galaxy  that  make  the  literary  glory  of  the  age  of 
Louis  XIV.,  though  his  best  work  was  done  before  the 
advent  of  that  monarch.  Born  in  1606,  he  was  sixteen 
years  older  than  Moliere  and  preceded  Eacine  by  a 
generation.  The  Jesuits  of  his  native  Eouen  educated 
him  for  the  law,  but  bashfulness  increased  his  distaste 
for  pleading,  and  accident  co-operated  with  genius  to 
draw  him  to  dramatic  work.  His  first  play,  "  Melite, " 
was  produced  in  Eouen  in  1629.  But  neither  this  nor 
the  dramas  that  followed  during  the  next  seven  years, 
though  far  superior  to  anything  that  had  preceded  them 
both  in  naturalness  and  vigor,  contained  more  than  a 
promise  of  better  things  to  come;  and  this  promise 
pointed  rather  to  the  Spanish  drama  of  intrigue  and 
to  the  comedy  of  contemporary  society  than  to  the  true 
field  of  his  tragic  genius.  It  is  hard  to  realize  that 
the  author  of  "  Horace  "  began  his  career  by  a  play  in 
which  kissing  and  pick-a-back  are  prominent  features, 
and  single-line  repartees,  "  cat  and  puss  dialogues,"  as 


66  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Butler  calls  them,  are  bandied  about  like  shuttle- 
cocks. But  it  may  seem  stranger  still  to  find  that  he 
felt  called  upon  to  apologize  for  "  his  simple  and 
familiar  style, "  saying  that  he  feared  the  reader  would 
take  simplicity  for  ill-breeding.  So  strong  was  the 
artificial  reaction  that  Malherbe  had  heralded,  even  on 
the  popular  stage.  But  Corneille  from  the  first  had  the 
courage  of  his  convictions.  He  never  sacrificed  nature 
to  rule,  nor  his  thought  to  a  vowel  quantity.  And  he 
lost  nothing  by  his  daring.  His  earlier  plays,  enliv- 
ened by  studies  from  life  and  the  happy  invention 
of  the  soubrette,  won  popular  success  both  at  Eouen  and 
at  Hardy's  theatre  in  Paris.  Thus  the  poet  was  drawn 
to  the  capital  and  the  passing  sunshine  of  Eichelieu's 
favor  in  1634.  This  he  lost  the  next  year  by  revising 
too  freely  a  dramatic  concept  of  the  great  yet  petty  Cardi- 
nal; but  with  the  public  he  was  a  favorite  to  the  last. 

The  contact  with  the  wider  life  of  Paris  and  his  lit- 
erary associations  there  awakened  dormant  powers. 
"  Me'de'e  "  appeared  in  1635,  and  in  two  .years  he  had 
written  the  "Cid  "  (1636),  a  drama  so  different  from 
the  previous  attempts  that  it  hardly  bears  a  trace  of 
the  same  hand.  This  work  attracted  universal  in- 
terest, and  placed  him  at  once  above  all  his  predeces- 
sors and  contemporaries.  Richelieu  was  jealous ;  the 
purists  of  the  Academy  took  umbrage,  less  at  the 
liberties  he  had  taken  with  his  Spanish  original  than 
at  those  he  had  failed  to  take.  Indeed  among  the 
coterie  of  the  precieux  the  perversion  of  taste  had 
reached  such  a  point  that  Scud  dry,  a  critic  of  some 
repute,  asserted,  and  it  seems  believed,  that  its  subject 
was  ill-chosen,  its  irregularity  unpardonable,  its  action 
clumsy,  its  verses  bad,  and  its  beauties  stolen.  The 
"  Cid  "  does,  indeed,  lack  the  ethical  depth  and  tragic 
force  of  "  Horace  "  or  "  Polyeucte ; "  yet,  as  Boileau 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          67 

said,  "  all  Paris  has  for  Eodrigue  the  eyes  of  Chimene, " 
and  the  drama  is  the  most  popular  on  the  stage  of  all 
his  plays. 

Corneille  could  not  be  as  independent  of  cultured 
opinion  as  Hardy.  The  fierce  battle  that  raged  round 
the  "  Cid  "  caused  him  to  withdraw  for  three  years  to 
Eouen.  But  he  had  faith  in  his  genius,  and  with  his 
return  to  Paris  in  1639  there  begins  a  period  of  almost 
unparalleled  fecundity.  The  Koman  tragedies,  "  Hor- 
ace "  and  "  Cinna  "  (1640),  were  followed  by  "  Poly- 
eucte, "  a  story  of  Christian  martyrdom,  —  a  bold 
venture,  for  when  it  was  read  at  the  Hotel  Eambouillet, 
"  the  Christianity  was  found  extremely  displeasing" 
to  these  delicate  souls,  who  thought  heathenism  good 
enough  for  literature,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  was 
also  Boileau's  conviction.  Then  came  "  Pompey  "  and 
"  Eodogune, "  a  tragedy  of  terror  which  marks  the  cul- 
mination of  a  tendency  to  exaggeration  in  passion  and 
character  that  allies  Corneille  to  the  Eomanticists. 
These,  with  "  Le  Menteur, "  the  first  good  French  com- 
edy, and  its  "  Suite, "  were  all  written  within  five  years, 
which  embrace  about  all  of  his  work  that  is  read  and 
prized  to-day.  There  follows  a  period  of  arrest  (1645- 
1652)  with  some  signs  of  decline,  but  with  flashes  of 
genius  as  bright  as  any  in  his  work,  and  with  an  occa- 
sional character  of  extraordinary  vigor  such  as  Phocas 
in  "  He'raclitus. "  At  length  he  suspended  his  dramatic 
work  for  seven  years  (1652-1659),  and  turned  his 
talent  to  a  versified  translation  of  the  "  Imitation  of 
Christ,"  and  to  critical  essays  of  remarkable  frank- 
ness on  his  own  plays  and  other  dramaturgical  work. 
Between  1659  and  1674  he  wrote  eleven  more  trage- 
dies of  unequal  mediocrity,  though  occasional  verses 
showed  all  the  fire  of  his  prime.  It  was  on  two  of 


68  MODERN  FKENCH   LITERATURE. 

these   that   Boileau    composed    his    famous   and   ill- 
natured  epigram :  — 

Apres  FAgesilas,  Helas, 

Mais  apres  1'Attila,  Hola. 

But  Boileau,  who  thought  Eacine  "  a  very  clever 
fellow  whom  I  had  a  hard  time  to  teach  to  write 
verse,"  is  recorded  as  of  the  opinion  that  the  three 
great  writers  of  his  day  were  "  Corneille,  Moli£re, 
and  —  myself.  "  The  opposition  Corneille  met  from 
those  who  followed  the  school  of  1660  was  not  due  to 
his  failing  talent,  but  to  the  new  conception  of  dra- 
matic art  introduced  by  Boileau  and  Eacine.  Even  in 
old  age  he  never  lost  popularity ;  but  he  lived  in  nar- 
row circumstances,  if  not  in  poverty.  "  I  am  satiated 
with  glory  and  hungry  for  money, "  he  said  in  these 
last  years,  with  a  grimness  that  seems  to  characterize 
his  social  relations.  He  would  never  curry  favor, 
and  Eacine  tells  us  he  suffered  in  consequence.  He 
had  admirers,  but  not  patrons,  and  he  died  in  compar- 
ative neglect  in  1684.  Indeed  the  development  of 
taste  was  leading  away  from  him,  and  in  the  next  cen- 
tury his  fame  suffered  a  partial  eclipse.  His  own  time 
and  ours  were  more  fitted  to  comprehend  and  appreci- 
ate him  than  the  intervening  period  of  iconoclasm  and 
perverted  criticism. 

The  first  impression  made  on  an  attentive  reader, 
even  of  Corneille 's  best  work,  is  his  unevenness.  No 
poet  rises  to  grander  heights  than  he.  If  we  judge 
him  by  his  best,  he  will  rank  with  the  greatest ;  but 
many  a  lesser  talent  is  more  sustained,  and  may  attain 
a  higher  average.  Moliere  saw  this :  "  My  friend 
Corneille, "  he  said,  "  has  a  familiar  spirit,  who  in- 
spires him  with  the  finest  verses  in  the  world ;  but 
sometimes  the  spirit  deserts  him,  and  then  it  fares 
ill  with  him. "  Therefore  Corneille  lends  himself 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          69 

admirably  to  citation.  Many  of  his  lines  cling  to  the 
memory,  and  any  alexandrine  with  a  rush  of  sound 
and  startling  pregnancy  of  suggestion  seems  a  "  Cor- 
neillian  "  verse.  The  latter  point  may  be  illustrated  ; 
one  must  be  a  Frenchman  to  feel  the  former. 

"  I  am  master  of  myself  as  well  as  of  the  world, " 
affirms  the  Emperor  Augustus  in  "  Cinna. "  "  Eome 
is  no  longer  in  Eome.  It  is  all  where  I  am, "  says  Ser- 
torius  to  Pompey.  The  assassinated  Attila,  strangled 
in  his  blood,  "  speaks  but  in  stifled  gasps  what  he 
imagines  he  speaks.  "  What  concentrated  force  in  the 
reply  of  the  father  of  Horace  :  "  What  would  you  have 
him  do  against  three  ?  "  "  That  he  should  die. "  Or 
in  Medea's :  "  What  resource  have  you  in  so  utter 
a  disaster  ?  "  "  Myself !  Myself,  I  say,  and  that  is 
enough.  "  "  Follow  not  my  steps, "  says  Polyeucte,  "  or 
leave  your  errors. "  Finally,  since  these  citations 
might  be  extended  almost  indefinitely,  consider  the 
closing  lines  of  Cleopatra's  curse  in  "  Eodogune"  :  — 

To  wish  you  all  misfortune  together, 

May  a  son  be  born  of  you  who  shall  resemble  me ; 

and  Camille's  upon  Eome  :  — 

May  1  with  my  own  eyes  see  this  thunderbolt  fall  on  her, 

See  her  houses  in  ashes  and  thy  laurels  in  dust, 

See  the  last  Roman  at  his  last  sigh, 

Myself  alone  be  cause  of  it,  and  die  of  the  joy.1 

1  Je  suis  maitre  de  moi  comme  de  1'univers  (Cinna,  v.  3).  Rome  n'est 
plus  dans  Rome.     Elle  est  toute  oil  je  suis  (Sertor.  iii.  1 ) .    Ce  n'est  plus 
qu'en  sanglots  qu'il  dit  ce  qu'il  croit  dire  (Attila,  v.  2).    Que  vouliez-vous 
qu'il  se  fit  centre  trois?  —  Qu'il  mourut !  ( Hor.  iii.  6).    Dans  uu  si  grand 
revers  que  vous  reste-t-il?  —  Moi !     Moi,  dis-je,  et  c'est  assez  (Medee,i. 
2).     Ne  suivez  point  mes  pas  ou  quittez  vos  erreurs  (Poly.  v.  3). 
Et,  pour  vous  souhaitez  tous  les  malheurs  ensemble, 
Puisse  nattre  de  vous  un  fils  qui  me  ressemble  (Rodog.  v.  4). 
Puisse'-je  de  mes  yeux  y  voir  tomber  ce  foudre, 
Voir  ses  masons  en  cendre,  et  tes  lauriers  en  poudre, 
Voir  le  dernier  Remain  a  son  dernier  soupir, 
Moi  seule,  en  etre  cause,  et  mourir  de  plaisir  (Hor.  iv.  5). 


70  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

It  is  lines  like  these,  and  they  are  many,  that  jus- 
tify Faguet  in  calling  Corneille's  language  "  the  most 
masculine,  energetic,  at  once  sober  and  full,  that  was 
ever  spoken  in  France, "  and  his  verses  "  the  most 
beautiful  that  ever  fell  from  a  French  pen."  It  is 
such  lines  that  induce  Saintsbury,  with  perhaps  un- 
guarded enthusiasm,  to  call  him  "  the  greatest  writer 
of  France,  the  only  one  who,  up  to  our  own  time,  can 
take  rank  with  the  Dantes  and  Shaksperes  of  other 
countries.  "l  It  is  of  them  that  Voltaire  says  :  "  They 
earned  Corneille  the  name  Great  to  distinguish  him, 
not  from  his  brother  Thomas,  but  from  the  rest  of 
mankind. " 

It  was  said  of  Corneille's  tragedies  that  they 
aroused  admiration  rather  than  tragic  fear.  He  does 
not  seek  to  interest  us  in  the  fate  of  his  characters,  but 
rather  in  the  indomitable  will  with  which  they  bear 
it,  and  in  their  haughty  disdain  for  it.  His  is  a 
drama  of  situations,  not  of  characters.  He  delights 
in  extraordinary  situations  and  subjects,  and  belongs, 
as  Brunetiere  happily  puts  it,  to  "  the  School  of  the 
Emphatics. "  2  So  it  is  natural  that  the  "  linked 
sweetness "  of  amorous  talk  that  takes  so  large  a  place 
in  Kacine  seems  to  him  rather  contemptible.  There 
is  no  philandering  or  fine-spun  sentiment  even  in  the 
loves  of  Chimene  and  Rodrigue,  and  in  "  Sertorius  " 
Aristie  cuts  short  her  lover  with  the  lines :  — 

Let  us  leave,  sir,  let  us  leave  for  petty  souls, 
This  grovelling  barter  of  sighs  and  loves. 

But  tragedy,  with  the  limitations  of  Corneille's 
method,  forbids  the  resource  of  a  minor  plot,  and 
involves  much  talk  with  little  action.  So  his  disdain 

1  Encyc.  Brit.  vi.  419.  2  Etudes  critiques,  i.  310. 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          71 

of  the  endless  subject  of  talk  leaves  him  often  with 
scenes  and  sometimes  acts  where  interest  hopelessly 
flags.  Even  his  noblest  work  is  not  without  monotony. 
It  is  always  a  like  grandeur  of  soul  that  he  represents, 
a  like  admiration  that  he  excites.  One  who  reads 
many  plays  of  Corneille  consecutively  finds  his  appre- 
ciation dulled,  and  the  public  who  witnessed  them 
consecutively  might  have  come  to  the  same  feeling. 
Then,  too,  he  has  not  quite  freed  the  drama  from  the 
lyric  and  epic  elements  that  lay  in  its  origin,  but  were 
foreign  to  its  nature.  Still  there  is  a  permanent  qual- 
ity in  his  work,  as  in  Shakspere's,  — a  touch  of  nature 
that  Eacine,  at  his  best,  lacks.  The  superb  declama- 
tions of  Camille,  of  Auguste,  or  of  Pompey's  widow 
Corne'lie,  to  name  no  others,  will  thrill  audiences  every- 
where, as  long  as  the  antinomies  of  love  and  patriot- 
ism, honor  and  duty,  perplex  men's  souls.  But  oratory 
is  far  from  being  the  only  use  of  language ;  and  by 
giving  to  French  when  in  a  very  plastic  state  a  sen- 
tentious imprint,  Corneille  exercised  an  influence  on 
the  future  of  his  mother  tongue  very  great,  but  not 
altogether  helpful  to  its  healthy  growth  and  further 
development. 

The  rival  of  Corneille 's  later  years  was  Eacine,  whom 
Boileau  reckoned  as  his  pupil,  so  that  we  may  regard 
him  as  representative  of  the  regular  academic  drama. 
He  had  a  more  stable  temperament,  his  work  was  more 
even  in  character  and  polished  in  execution,  and  by 
close  adherence  to  rule  he  long  and  successfully 
masked  the  weaker  side  of  his  genius.  Such  formal 
correctness  suited  the  age  of  Louis,  as  it  did  that  of 
Anne.  But  in  less  skilful  hands  than  his,  it  sank 
quickly  to  a  mannerism  as  dreary  as  it  was  con- 
temptible. It  is  indirectly  due  to  him  that  tragedy, 


72  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

except  for  Voltaire,  hardly  lifts  its  head  from  the 
waters  of  oblivion  between  his  death  and  the  rise  of 
the  Eomantic  School. 

Eacine  began  his  education  at  Port-Koyal,  and 
owed  to  that  school  the  development  of  literary 
tastes,  and  a  love  for  Greekj  which  furnished  the  basis 
of  his  tragic  psychology,  while  that  of  Corneille  had 
a  more  Eoman  sturdiness.  He  completed  his  studies 
at  Paris,  and  at  twenty  was  already  author  of  poems 
that  earned  him  the  rewards  of  the  court  and  the  con- 
demnation of  critics.  But  he  had  soon  the  good  for- 
tune to  meet  La  Fontaine  and  Moliere,  and  was 
persuaded  to  try  tragedy.  His  first  drama,  "  The 
Natural  Enemies,"  a  study  from  JEschylus'  "Seven 
against  Thebes, "  is  in  style  a  feeble  imitation  of  Cor- 
neille. His  next  work,  "  Alexandre  "  (1665),  was  also 
produced  under  the  influence  of  Moliere,  arid  marked 
growing  power ;  but  Eacine  broke  with  him  that  year, 
and  his  later  pieces  were  acted  in  the  rival  theatre  of 
the  Hotel  de  Bourgogne.  He  now  became  the  pupil 
of  Boileau,  who  was  inclined  to  attribute  to  himself 
the  success  of  his  diligent  scholar, —  not  without  some 
justice,  for  Eacine 's  style  was  of  the  kind  that  is 
formed  by  criticism  and  profits  by  careful  elaboration. 
This  was  illustrated  by  "  Andromaque  "  (1667),  a  play 
that  "  made  almost  as  much  talk  as  the  '  Cid, '  "  accord- 
ing to  the  testimony  of  Perrault,  rousing  the  admira- 
tion of  the  friends  and  the  scorn  of  the  enemies  of 
Boileau.  These  latter  the  dramatist,  with  the  critic's 
co-operation,  presently  satirized  in  the  Aristophanian 
"  Plaideurs, "  which  has  unique  merits,  and  shows  the 
author  more  emancipated  in  his  versification  than  he 
had  been  or  was  to  be. 

Corneille,  like  most  writers  of  the  earlier  half  of  the 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          73 

seventeenth  century,  had  subordinated  passion  to  will ; 
Eacine  and  the  School  of  1660,  in  accord  with  the 
changed  temper  of  the  time,  subordinated  will  to  pas- 
sion. Hence  critics  said  that  Kacine's  tragic  talent 
was  limited  to  the  painting  of  love.  To  prove  them 
wrong  he  wrote  "  Britannicus  "  (1669),  which  went 
a  long  way  to  prove  them  right.  The  piece  was  not  a 
success,  and  he  returned  the  next  year  to  the  old 
theme  with  "  Berenice, "  a  play  that  established  the 
ascendency  of  the  young  poet  over  the  aging  Corneille, 
who  had  attempted  the  same  subject.  The  plays  that 
followed,  "  Bajazet "  (1672)  and  "  Mithridate  "  (1673), 
show  greater  suppleness  and  strength,  but  it  is  still 
the  same  well-worn  theme.  Yet  they  mark  the  height 
of  the  poet's  fame,  to  which  "  Iphige'nie  "  (1674)  added 
nothing,  while  "  Phedre  "  (1677),  exaggerating  the  de- 
fects of  his  qualities,  failed  to  hold  the  popular  favor. 
He  seems  to  have  been  threatened  with  prosecution  as 
a  corrupter  of  morals. l  Scruples  that  honor  him  caused 
him  to  withdraw  from  the  stage,  as  Corneille  had 
done.  But  his  return  to  it  twelve  years  later  in 
"  Esther "  (1689)  and  "  Athalie  "  (1691)  showed  his 
genius  at  its  highest  point.  Indeed  some  regard 
"  Athalie  "  as  the  masterpiece  of  the  entire  French 
drama.  The  causes  of  this  superiority  were  also  the 
causes  of  its  lukewarm  public  reception.  Both  plays 
were  written  for  Madame  de  Maintenon's  great  school 
for  noblewomen  at  St.  Cyr.  Hence,  by  a  happy  neces- 
sity, love-making  was  suppressed,  and  a  greater  scope 
was  given  to  action,  in  imitation  of  sixteenth-century 
models,  than  Boileau  would  have  counselled  or  ap- 
proved. This  glorious  aftermath  closed  the  poet's 
literary  career.  He  died  in  1699. 

1  Cp.  Brunetiere,  fipoques  du  theatre  fran9ais,  p.  155,  note. 


74  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

It  accords  with  Eacine's  conception  of  dramatic  art 
that  his  scenes  are  laid  in  foreign  countries,  where 
artificial  conventions  are  masked  by  the  strangeness  of 
the  environment.  But  there  is  no  attempt  at  any  local 
color.  The  Greece  of  Agamemnon  was  not  more  for- 
eign to  the  Versailles  of  Louis  XIV.  than  it  was  to  the 
Greece  of  Eacine's  "  Iphige'nie.  *  This  is  least  felt  in 
"  Les  Plaideurs, "  in  "  Esther, "  and  "  Athalie, "  for  here 
the  poet  is  more  free ;  but  it  should  be  noted  that  in 
all  his  work  the  artificiality  is  in  the  received  notion 
of  tragic  art  rather  than  in  the  literary  instinct  of  the 
man.  At  his  most  plastic  period  he  had  been  associ- 
ated with  Moliere,  and  to  the  last,  so  far  as  the  con- 
ventions allowed,  he  tried  to  do  what  Moliere  had  done 
in  comedy,  —  to  study  and  paint  with  an  honest  and 
naturalistic  psychology  human  passions  and  feelings, 
dissociated  from  any  relations  of  country  or  age. l  He 
aims  at  a  noble  simplicity.  His  ideal,  as  he  states  it, 
is  "  a  simple  action,  with  few  incidents,  such  as  might 
take  place  in  a  single  day,  which,  advancing  steadily 
toward  its  end,  is  sustained  only  by  the  interests  and 
passions  of  the  characters,"  who,  as  he  says  elsewhere, 
"  must  be  neither  too  perfect  nor  too  base,  so  that 
hearers  may  recognize  themselves  in  them ;  not  alto- 
gether culpable,  nor  wholly  innocent,  with  a  virtue 
capable  of  weakness,  that  their  faults  may  make 
them  less  detested  than  pitied  "  His  interest,  then, 
is  in  character,  not  in  action ;  while  Corneille  always 
sought  the  complex  crises  of  history. 

Now,  this  conception  of  tragedy  is  much  more  akin 
to  comedy  than  any  that  had  preceded  it.  It  is  a 

1  He  was  reproached  for  this  by  Fontanelle,  who  found  his  charac- 
ters so  "  natural "  that  they  seemed  base.  Cp.  Brunetiere,  Etudes 
critiques,  i.  319. 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          75 

study  of  human  passion  and  weakness,  as  in  Moliere ; 
but  here  the  pitiless  analysis  is  pushed  to  the  point 
where  amused  interest  yields  to  dread,  and  the  smile 
to  terror. l  It  is  this  naturalistic  portrayal  of  passions 
common  to  all  men  of  all  time  that  keeps  Eacine's 
hold  on  the  minds  of  Frenchmen,  in  spite  of  the  con- 
straints of  his  form ;  for  of  all  Europeans  they  perhaps 
are  most  willing  to  condone  this  trammel  to  the  free 
development  of  genius.  Yet  apart  from  this  his 
talent  was  not  of  supreme  rank.  He  had  not  the  tragic 
grandeur  of  Corneille,2  still  less  of  Shakspere,  and 
even  in  his  chosen  sphere  he  had  not  the  keen  psycho- 
logical insight  of  Moliere. 

We  are  thus  brought  to  the  greatest  of  all  writers  of 
social  comedy,  incomparably  the  greatest  French  writer 
of  his  century,  and  perhaps  the  greatest  name  in  all 
their  literature,  Jean  Baptiste  Poquelin,  the  first  Paris- 
ian among  the  great  writers  of  France,  in  his  ethics 
successor  of  Eabelais  and  Montaigne,  and  predecessor 
of  the  rationalists  of  the  next  century,  of  Voltaire  and 
Diderot;  who,  on  becoming  identified  with  the  stage, 
took,  and  made  immortal,  the  name  of  Moliere  (1622- 
1673).  His  parents  were  well-to-do,  he  was  carefully 
educated  by  the  Jesuits,  and  his  philosophical  studies 
with  Gassendi,  or  early  associations  with  such  libertins 
as  Lhuillier,  left  many  traces  in  his  work  and  more  in 
his  life.  Then,  like  Corneille,  he  studied  law.  But 

1  This  point  is  ingeniously  elaborated  by  Faguet,  169  sqq. 

2  Brunetiere,  Etudes  critiques,  i.  178,  makes   this  judicious  com- 
parison :  "  The  work  of  Corneille,  with  all  its  imperfections  of  detail, 
is  more  varied  than  that  of  Eacine.     It  has  a  surer  and  quicker  effect 
on  the  stage  ;  above  all,  its  inspiration  is  higher,  more  generous,  more 
elevated  beyond  the  common  order  and  ordinary  conditions  of  life. 
But  how  much  it  costs  to  confess  it  when  we  come  from  reading 
Racine ! " 


76  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

presently  we  find  him  associated  with  a  dramatic  com- 
pany, "  L'lllustre  Theatre,"  which  left  Paris  in  1646 
to  try  its  fortune  in  the  provinces.  For  some  years  of 
wandering  and  precarious  existence,  during  which 
the  company  visited  almost  all  the  larger  cities  of 
France,1  Moliere  furnished  their  repertoire  with  light 
farces,  and  at  length  with  more  finished  comedies  in 
the  style  of  the  time,  — "  L'Etourdi"  (1653  or  1655) 
and  "  Le  Ddpit  amoureux  "  (1656).  This  wandering 
life  was  a  priceless  school  to  him  in  the  study  of 
middle-class  men  and  manners.  The  future  social 
comedian  could  hardly  have  used  these  years  to  better 
advantage.  But  the  company,  or  at  least  Moliere,  was 
now  financially  prosperous ;  and  in  1658,  after  more 
than  twelve  years'  absence,  he  arranged  for  their  return 
to  Paris. 

In  spite  of  borrowed  Italian  elements,  these  early 
comedies  had  been  enthusiastically  received,  and  indeed 
they  were  much  the  best  that  France  could  show.  But 
both  were  now  cast  in  the  shade  by  "  Les  Pr^cieuses  ridi- 
cules, "  the  first  dramatic  satire  on  cultured  society  in 
France.  The  blue-stockings  of  the  Hotel  Kambouillet, 
or  perhaps  their  bourgeois  imitators,  who,  according  to 
the  "  Eoman  bourgeois, "  abounded  in  Paris,  their 
affected  language  and  manners,  were  held  up  to  such 
good-humored  ridicule  that  success  was  immediate  and 
universal.  Indeed  the  play  has  not  yet  lost  its  comic 
force,  for  learning  has  not  wholly  supplanted  the  affec- 
tation of  it  even  among  the  women  of  to-day. 

Equally  typical  of  Moliere  is  his  next  play,  "  Sgana- 
relle "  (1660),  the  first  of  those  gay  yet  profound 

1  We  hear  of  them  at  Agen,  Angouleme,  Beziers,  Bordeaux, 
Limoges,  Lyons,  Montpellier,  Nantes,  Nar bonne,  Nimes,  Rouen, 
Toulouse. 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          77 

farces,  which  still  hold  the  stage  because  they  raise 
first  a  laugh  and  then  a  thoughtful  smile.  "  Don 
Garcie, "  which  follows,  marks  a  relapse  to  the  tradi- 
tional comedy  ;  but  in  "  L'Scole  des  maris, "  though  the 
plot  is  borrowed  from  Terence's  "Adelphi,"  there 
is  a  study  of  character  and  a  pathos  in  the  treatment  of 
the  aged  lover  that  bears  the  print  of  the  time  and  of 
Moliere's  genius.  In  February  of  the  next  year 
Moliere  himself  married  a  young  woman  of  his  troupe, 
more  than  twenty  years  his  junior,  much  to  his  future 
sorrow,  though  she  was  probably  not  so  black  as  con- 
temporary scandal  asserted  and  literary  scavengers 
delight  to  repeat. 

In  1662  he  touched  more  dangerous  ground  in 
"  L'Ecole  des  femmes, "  a  covert  naturalistic  attack  on 
hypocrisy  and  literal  orthodoxy,  by  which  he  raised 
comedy  from  a  diversion  to  a  living  teaching  of  a  phi- 
losophy of  life.  Here  first  comedy  became  moral 
satire,  and  here  first  the  aristocracy  was  ridiculed. 
This  unchained  a  storm  of  rage,  nursed  by  jealousy, 
such  as  actor-poet  has  seldom  faced.  He  replied  to  his 
critics  first  in  the  witty  "  Critique  de  1'Bcole  des 
femmes  "  and  then  in  the  "  Impromptu  de  Versailles, " 
where  his  roused  indignation  did  not  scruple  to  name 
opponents  and  caricature  rivals  whom  he  scourged 
with  caustic  cruelty.  In  1664  he  renewed  his  attack 
on  that  most  contemptible  of  all  vices  with  three  acts 
of  "  Tartufe,  the  Hypocrite, "  in  which  he  inaugurates 
the  comedy  of  characters  as  distinct  from  that  of  man- 
ners. This  open  satire  of  false  devotion,  which  was 
perhaps  also  a  covert  attack  on  all  unnatural  moral 
constraint,  earned  him  from  these  professors  of  peace 
and  good-will  the  pious  wish  that  this  "  demon  in 
human  flesh  "  might  "  speedily  be  burned  on  earth,  that 


78  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

he  might  burn  the  sooner  in  hell. "  It  was  five  years 
before  he  was  suffered  to  act  the  entire  play ;  but  the 
king's  favor  remained  constant,  and  Moliere  continued 
the  fight  with  the  yet  more  daring  "  Don  Juan, "  while 
light  farces,  such  as  "  L' Amour  me'decin, "  relieved  the 
serious  contest. 

But,  except  for  "  Tartufe,"  it  is  with  1666  that  the 
great  manner  of  Moliere  begins  with  "  Le  Misan- 
thrope, "  which  Boileau,  Lessing,  and  Goethe  unite  to 
regard  as  his  profoundest  study  of  human  character. 
Slowly  but  surely  it  has  won  its  way  to  the  foremost 
place  in  popular  esteem  also,  and  is  now  perhaps  the 
most  generally  read  and  quoted  of  all  his  plays. 
Alceste,  the  noble  pessimist  soured  by  experience, 
Philinte,  the  easy-going  social  trimmer,  the  conceited 
poetaster  Oronte,  the  witty  and  censorious  Ce'limene 
are  types  as  enduring  as  society. 

Failing  health  now  began  to  lessen  his  productivity, 
though  not  his  wit.  But  in  1668  he  brought  out  two 
masterpieces,  the  extremely  witty  "  Amphitryon, "  and 
"  George  Dandin, "  type  of  the  man  who  marries  above 
his  station  and  suffers  the  consequences.  Then  fol- 
lowed that  wonderful  psychic  picture  "  L'Avare, "  the 
Miser.  Then  for  three  years  (1669-1671),  a  succes- 
sion of  light  farces,  among  them  the  immortal  "  Bour- 
geois gentilhomme, "  marks  the  recrudescence  of  his 
malady ;  but  in  "  Les  Femmes  savantes  "  the  poet  re- 
turned to  the  subject  of  the  "  Pre'cieuses, "  and  with  his 
maturer  powers  attacked  the  admirers  of  pedantry  and 
the  affectation  of  learning, —  a  subject  always  new,  that 
in  our  own  day  has  inspired  one  of  the  happiest  efforts 
of  the  modern  stage,  "  Le  Monde  ou  Ton  s'ennuie. " 
This  was  his  last  important  work.  Already  a  con- 
sumptive cough  was  wearing  him  away.  On  February 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          79 

17,  1673,  as  he  was  acting  in  a  new  and  almost 
fiercely  bitter  farce,  "  Le  Malade  imaginaire, "  he  rup- 
tured a  blood-vessel  in  a  spasm  of  coughing,  and  was 
carried  from  the  stage  to  die.  He  was  buried  half 
clandestinely;  for  the  Archbishop  of  Paris,  feeling 
perhaps  that  Moliere 's  ethics  were  as  irreconcilable 
with  the  received  form  of  Christianity  as  ever  those  of 
Kabelais  had  been,  forbade  the  clergy  to  say  prayers 
for  him.  But  he  had  given  liberally  of  his  wealth, 
and  the  poor  crowded  to  his  funeral ;  yet  the  site  of 
his  grave  is  now  uncertain. 

Moliere  came  at  a  propitious  time,  for  comedy  had 
not  suffered  from  the  false  classicism  of  tragedy ;  and 
if  little  of  merit  had  yet  been  done,  there  was  promise 
in  the  general  interest,  both  popular  and  cultured,  in 
the  subject.  The  danger  was  that  Spanish  or  classical 
models  might  be  too  slavishly  followed.  In  his  hands 
farce  became  comedy,  and  so  won  a  dignity  and  an 
independence  that  gave  it  the  freedom  of  conscious 
strength.  And  at  the  same  time  he  broke  a  way  of 
escape  from  the  "  alexandrine  prison  "  and  the  bondage 
of  the  unities.  Some  of  his  very  best  work  was  done  in 
prose,  and  he  never  allowed  verse  to  fetter  his  thoughts 
or  be  more  than  a  subordinate  means  to  a  higher  end. 
Indeed,  he  could  not  have  polished  his  work  as  Eacine 
did.  In  thirteen  years  he  had  written  twenty-five 
plays,  seven  of  them  serious  masterpieces ;  he  had 
been  stage -manager,  actor,  and  often  manager  of  the 
royal  festivals  at  Versailles.  Life  to  him  had  been 
work,  and  it  was  fitting  that  he  should  die  in  harness. 

A  man  of  indomitable  energy,  no  dramatist  ever  united 
so  much  wit  with  so  much  seriousness  as  did  Moliere. 
There  is  often  a  pathetic,  even  a  sad,  background  to 
his  work ;  but  he  never  allows  this  to  get  the  better  of 


80  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

his  healthy  humor,  which  depends  for  its  effect,  not 
on  intrigue  or  play  of  words,  but  on  the  unexpected 
revelations  of  character  that  come  like  flashes  in  his 
plays.  And  here  his  satire  is  directed  always  against 
those  social  faults  that  disguise  or  suppress  natural 
instincts,  not  against  the  excesses  of  nature.  It  is  not 
ambition  or  even  hedonism  that  he  scourges,  but 
hypocrisy,  pedantry,  amorous  old  age,  prudery,  ava- 
rice, or  preciosity. 1  The  purpose  to  hold  the  mirror  up 
to  Nature,  that  she  may  see  her  face  and  mend  her 
ways,  gives  even  his  roaring  farces  an  element  of  true 
comedy.  But  this  purpose  brings  with  it  a  tendency 
to  typify  phases  of  character,  as  with  Eacine,  rather 
than  to  present  the  complexity  of  human  nature,  as 
with  Corneille ;  and  this  disposition  was  long  charac- 
teristic of  French  comedy. 2  In  the  analysis  of  charac- 
ter Shakspere  is  more  profound,  and  he  tells  a  story 
with  far  more  dramatic  force.  Indeed,  to  Moliere  the 
story,  for  its  own  sake,  is  a  very  minor  matter;  but 
Shakspere  has  less  of  the  direct  contact  with  and  in- 
fluence on  contemporary  life  that  is  the  result  of 
Moliere 's  naturalistic  method  and  his  study  of  the  im- 
mediate environment. 

This  method  was  that  of  his  successors,  of  whom 
Eegnard  only  need  be  named,  though  his  best  work  is 
disappointing,  whether  regarded  in  the  light  of  what 
had  preceded,  or  of  the  French  comedy  of  to-day.  For 
the  tendency  of  the  coming  age  was  away  from  the  natu- 
ralistic position.  Yet,  as  one  reviews  the  seventeenth 
century  and  the  "  classical  "  period,  it  is  clear  that 
naturalism  was  characteristic  of  its  most  successful 

1  Cp.  Brunetiere,  Etudes  critiques,  iv.  185. 

2  Such  titles  as  "  The  Miser,"  "  The  Misanthrope,"  or  Bernard's 
"  The  Gambler,"  "  The  Distraught,"  illustrate  this. 


THE  SEVENTEENTH  CENTURY.          81 

work.  It  began  with  an  attempt  to  codify  and  regu- 
late the  individual  conquests  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
Malherbe  in .  poetry,  Balzac  in  prose,  undertook  to  be 
lawgivers  for  language  and  style.  Just  in  so  far  as 
the  century  yielded,  and  the  mental  lassitude  of  the 
reaction  from  the  Eenaissance  made  it  easy  to  yield, 
to  this  gospel  of  artificiality,  stagnation  followed.  In 
prose  it  was  least  possible  to  crib  and  confine ;  and  here 
there  was  the  most  varied  development,  from  which 
it  was  easy  to  purge  the  chaff  and  the  tinsel.  In  the 
drama  the  yoke  was  more  felt,  and  in  poetry  most  of 
all.  But  those  poets  and  dramatists  who  were  able  to 
rise  above  these  artificial  constraints,  and  to  build  upon 
the  foundations  laid  by  the  giants  of  the  sixteenth 
century  a  structure  of  their  own,  the  independent  stu- 
dents of  nature  and  society, —  La  Fontaine,  Moliere,  in 
a  greater  degree  Corneille,  in  a  less  degree  Eacine,  — 
are  those  who  are  prized  to-day,  and  prized  most  for 
that  which  the  strict  "  classical  "  purists  would  have 
condemned. 


82  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 


CHAPTEE  III 

THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY. 

THE  eighteenth  century  is  the  age  of  Voltaire  in  a 
sense  and  to  a  degree  that  is  unparalleled  in  European 
literary  history.  Even  Goethe,  who  has  also  his  "  cen- 
tury, "  is  less  typical,  his  sway  less  undisputed,  and 
his  excellence,  though  greater,  less  diversified ;  for  it 
is  the  peculiar  distinction  of  Voltaire  that  there  is  no 
department  of  letters  in  which  he  did  not  hold  a 
prominent  place,  while  in  most  he  stood  by  common 
consent  at  the  head. 

Voltaire  is  not  the  author  of  the  best  lyrics  of  the 
century,  but  he  comes  just  short  of  the  highest  place, 
being  indeed  all  that  a  versifier  can  be  who  lacks  what 
Horace  calls  the  "  divine  breath  "  of  poetry.  His 
satires  are  the  keenest,  his  tales  in  verse  the  wittiest, 
in  the  language.  He  is  the  author  of  the  most  correct 
serious  epic  and  of  the  wittiest  comic  epic  of  his 
time ;  he  is  incomparably  its  best  novelist  and  its  best 
dramatist.  His  essays  in  physics  are  said  to  be  cred- 
itable ;  and  though  he  was  neither  a  metaphysician  nor 
a  theologian,  his  works  on  ethics  and  theology  are, 
and  were,  more  read  and  prized  than  those  of  any  of 
his  philosophical  or  clerical  contemporaries.  He  was 
far  the  best  literary  critic  of  that  day,  and  its  most 
popular  historian.  Besides  this,  he  was  the  author  of 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  83 

an  infinite  number  of  miscellaneous  pamphlets,  and 
of  a  correspondence  of  appalling  volume,  almost  all  of 
which  is  interesting,  at  least,  for  its  polished  form.  To 
whatever  field  of  literature  we  turn,  we  shall  find  his 
mark  set  up  in  it.  It  is  not  until  toward  the  close  of 
the  century  that  Eousseau,  in  the  ethical  and  political 
field,  rivals,  and  for  a  time  overshadows,  the  philoso- 
pher  of  Ferney.  Voltaire  will  introduce  us  to  the 
century  and  accompany  us  through  it ;  Kousseau  will 
furnish  its  natural  epilogue. 

Voltaire  (1694-1778),  whose  real  name  of  Arouet  is 
seldom  given  him,  was  the  son  of  a  wealthy  and  rather 
distinguished  Parisian  notary ;  but  his  early  training 
was  at  the  hands  of  his  skeptical  and  scholarly  god- 
father, the  Abbe*  de  Chateauneuf,  and  in  1704  he  passed 
into  the  moulding  hands  of  the  Jesuits,  who  seem  to 
have  given  him  a  better  education  than  in  later  con- 
troversial years  he  liked  to  admit.  He  still  saw 
much  of  the  Abbe,  and  was  far  from  cloistered.  In- 
deed, during  the  first  year  of  his  school  life  he  so  won 
the  attention  and  interest  of  his  godfather's  friend, 
the  famous  Ninon  de  1'Enclos,  that  she  bequeathed  him 
two  thousand  livres,  —  "  to  buy  books,"  she  said. 

He  left  school  in  1711,  and  pretended  to  study  law ; 
but  all  his  ambitions  were  clearly  literary,  and  he  was 
already  a  member  of  the  noted  literary  circle,  "  du 
Temple.  "  His  father,  dissatisfied  with  such  vagaries, 
sent  him  first  to  Caen ;  then  to  the  Hague,  where  he  got 
entangled  with  a  young  Protestant  lady,  to  the  yet 
more  intense  disgust  of  his  parent,  who  actually 
obtained  a  lettre  de  cachet  from  the  king  authorizing 
his  son's  confinement.  But  he  made  no  use  of  it;  for 
Voltaire,  always  cautious  in  his  daring,  returned  to 
Paris  and  the  law,  and  occupied  his  mischievous  energy 


84  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

in  writing  libellous  poems,  until  the  perplexed  father 
had  to  send  him  away  once  more.  It  was  not  till 
1715  that  he  returned  to  the  laxer  society  of  the  Re- 
gency and  to  his  literary  circle,  whom  he  presently 
charmed  by  his  first  play,  "  (Edipe.  "  But  his  itching 
fingers,  under  the  provoking  inspiration  of  the  ambi- 
tious Duchess  of  Maine,  were  soon  writing  epigrams 
on  the  Regent  himself  that  invited  and  justified  a  brief 
exile  (1716),  followed  by  confinement  for  ten  months 
in  the  Bastille  and  a  second  short  banishment  from 
the  capital.  Yet,  though  the  witty  Orleans  did  not 
trust  Voltaire,  he  enjoyed  him;  and  late  in  1718  the 
poet  was  able  to  produce  "  CEdipe  "  with  success  at 
Paris,  whence  political  squibs  soon  drove  him  for  the 
fourth  time,  though  the  good-humored  Regent  shortly 
after  gave  him  a  pension,  and  seems  to  have  employed 
him  in  the  secret  diplomatic  service  from  1722  to 
1725.  His  social  position  was  already  assured  by  the 
death  of  his  father,  who  left  him  a  respectable  com- 
petency ;  and  he  occupied  himself  during  these  years  as 
a  literary  dilettante  with  an  epic,  "  La  Henriade, "  and 
a  second  tragedy,  "  Mariamne. "  But  in  1725  a  quar- 
rel with  the  Chevalier  de  Rohan  sent  him  first  to  the 
Bastille,  then  to  England,  —  an  event  of  such  impor- 
tance to  his  development  that  it  forms,  like  Goethe's 
visit  to  Italy,  the  turning-point  in  his  intellectual 
life. 

In  England  Voltaire  got.  first  of  all,  a  very  con- 
siderable sum  of  money,  which  he  employed  so  well  in 
fortunate  speculations  and  investments,  that  his  future 
life  was  always  free  from  financial  care,  and,  at  the 
last,  almost  seignorial.  This  made  it  possible  for  him 
to  be  more  independent  of  patronage  and  favor  than 
any  other  literary  man  in  France ;  and  for  the  work 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  85 

he  had  before  him  such  independence  was  necessary. 
Then,  too,  contact  with  English  character  and  institu- 
tions could  not  but  have  a  deep  effect  on  so  mobile  a 
genius.  The  contrast  between  France  and  England, 
greater  then  than  now,  stimulated  his  mind  to  more 
serious  thoughts  on  society  and  philosophy,  and  he  re- 
turned to  France,  more  capable,  perhaps,  than  any 
other  Frenchman  of  seeing  the  weak  sides  of  her  con- 
stitution and  polity,  and  ready  to  offer  opinions  on 
them,  which  are  often  specious,  though  seldom  pro- 
found. He  made  also  a  serious  though  brief  effort 
to  understand  Shakspere ;  and  even  if  he  failed  to  ap- 
prehend him,  he  learned  much  from  the  English  stage 
that  affected  his  literary  taste  and  that  of  the  French 
public  also,  to  whom  he  was  first  to  introduce  one  des- 
tined to  have  the  profoundest  influence  on  the  litera- 
ture of  later  generations.1  Even  more  important  to 
his  intellectual  development  was  the  study  of  English 
science  and  philosophy,  especially  of  Newton  and 
Locke,  by  which  he  systematized  his  views  of  nature 
and  religion. 

After  several  tentative  visits,  Voltaire  returned  to 
France  in  1729,  where  he  continued  his  dramatic 
activity  with  "  Zaire  "  (1732)  and  some  inferior  plays, 
wrote  his  "  History  of  Charles  XII. , "  and  began  his 
comic  epic  "  La  Pucelle, "  the  source  of  much  amuse- 
ment and  of  much  deserved  censure  through  many 
years  of  his  life.  But  his  restless  spirit  soon  got  him 
in  hot  water  again  with  a  volume  of  skeptical  "  Letters 
on  the  English,"  and  with  the  "  Temple  of  Taste,"  a 
satire  on  the  poetasters  of  the  time,  accompanied  by 
some  remarks  on  Pascal,  in  which  the  orthodox  scented 

1  See  Pellissier,  La  Litte'rature  contemporaiue,  p.  69,  Le  Drame 
shakespearien. 


86  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

danger  and  heresy.  They  had  the  book  burned,  but 
the  author  laughed  at  them  from  across  the  frontier  in 
Lorraine. 

Here,  soon  after,  he  settled  for  some  years  at  Cirey 
with  Madame  du  Chatelet,  the  "  respectable  Emily  "  of 
his  correspondence,  for  his  hostess ;  and  it  is  probable 
that  ties  closer  than  Platonic  bound  them,  though  Vol- 
taire's loves,  like  Jean- Jacques',  were  always  more 
cerebral  than  material,  and  Emily  did  not  hesitate  to 
supplement  his  affections  by  more  commonplace  attach- 
ments. He  had  now  ample  leisure  as  well  as  security, 
and  here  first  he  took  up  the  serious  profession  of 
authorship.  In  1735,  with  a  cheerful  self-confidence 
that  was  hardly  justified,  he  produced  a  treatise  on 
Metaphysics  less  philosophical  than  controversial ;  in 
1736  came  a  popular  exposition  of  the  Newtonian 
system,  and  "  Alzire, "  a  drama  of  Peru ;  and  this  was 
followed  by  "  Le  Mondain, "  whose  outspoken  opti- 
mism, if  not  essentially  anti-Christian,  could  hardly 
fail  to  seem  so  to  the  representatives  of  the  French 
establishment. 

The  result  was  a  long  and  bitter  controversy,  traces 
of  which  can  be  found  in  the  allusions  to  the  "  Jour- 
nal des  Tre'voux, "  to  Frdron  and  Desfontaines,  which 
abound  in  his  epigrams  and  satires.  To-day,  how- 
ever, "  Le  Mondain  "  seems  far  less  offensive  in  its 
language  and  tendency  than  "  La  Pucelle,  "  from  which 
he  still  continued  to  "  snatch  a  fearful  joy, "  reading 
it  to  friends  whenever  he  got  a  chance,  while  he 
guarded  it  from  publication  with  ostentatious  anxiety. 
During  all  these  years  his  pen  was  tireless.  The  mass 
of  minor  work  produced  was  enormous,  and  by  1741 
he  had  completed  "  Mdrope  "  and  "  Mohamet, "  dramas 
second  only  to  "  Za'ire.  " 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  87 

Meantime,  since  1736,  he  had  been  corresponding 
with  the  philosophic  king,  Frederic  of  Prussia,  whom 
he  met  in  1740  and  visited  in  1743.  Absence  had 
now  restored  him  to  the  graces  of  the  Parisian  court; 
in  1745  he  was  made  royal  historiographer,  a  post 
honored  by  the  names  of  Eacine  and  Boileau ;  and  in 
1746  he  entered  the  Academy.  But  his  literary  in- 
discretions soon  obliged  him  to  leave  these  honors  and 
French  soil,  still  accompanied  by  the  "  respectable 
Emily,"  whose  death  at  Luneville  in  1749  left  him  a 
man  of  fifty-five,  famous,  rich,  but  without  a  home 
and  without  a  country.  It  was  natural,  under  these 
conditions,  that  he  should  lend  a  favorable  ear  to  the 
invitation  of  Frederic  to  come  to  share,  or,  as  he  would 
interpret  it,  to  lead,  the  brilliant  group  of  literary 
men  which  that  great  king  had  gathered  at  his  court. 
So,  after  a  year  of  restless  wandering  and  malicious 
activity  that  found  its  chief  expression  in  satirical 
tales,  he  went  to  Berlin  in  July,  1750. 

Voltaire's  stay  in  Germany  had  more  influence  on 
the  literary  men  of  that  country  than  it  had  on  him. 
His  quarrels  and  rupture  with  Frederic  (1753)  do  not 
concern  us.  They  were  too  great  intellectually  to  get 
on  well  together,  but  too  great  also  not  to  admire  one 
another  genuinely  when  apart.  In  his  relations  with 
the  literary  men  of  Frederic's  circle,  Voltaire  appears  in 
an  unfavorable  light,  showing  most  strongly  here,  what 
he  never  failed  to  show  elsewhere,  vanity,  spiteful- 
ness,  financial  unscrupulousness,  a  great  desire  to 
proclaim  disagreeable  and  dangerous  truths,  and  an 
equally  earnest  determination  at  all  moral  costs  to 
avoid  the  consequences  of  so  doing. 

During  his  three  years  at  Berlin,  Voltaire  finished 
his  famous  essay  on  the  Eeign  of  Louis  XIV.,  and  his 


88  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

fiercest  literary  lampoon,  the  "  Diatribe  du  Docteur 
Akakia, "  an  insult  to  his  fellow-guest,  Maupertuis, 
which  resulted  in  the  severing  of  their  relations,  and 
closed  Prussia  to  him  as  France  was  already  closed. 
His  "  Essai  sur  les  moeurs  "  now  appeared,  and  made 
his  position  even  more  difficult ;  so  it  was  natural  that 
after  some  travels  he  should  turn  to  Switzerland, — 
then,  in  spite  of  provincial  narrowness,  a  noble  refuge 
of  free-thought.  Here  he  could  lead  an  independent 
life ;  and  here,  in  or  near  Geneva,  he  made  his 
"  home,"  the  first  he  had  ever  had,  from  1754  till  his 
death,  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century  later.  At  first  he 
lived  in  the  suburbs  of  Geneva ;  but  he  soon  bought  a 
large  estate  at  Ferney,  just  across  the  French  frontier, 
and  so  administered  his  domain  that  the  population  of 
Ferney  grew  under  his  fostering  care  from  fifty  at  his 
coming  to  twelve  hundred  at  his  death.  But  he  also 
prudently  acquired  various  houses  of  refuge  in  Savoy, 
at  Lausanne,  and  in  other  jurisdictions.  He  managed 
his  large  domain  with  patriarchal  shrewdness,  practised 
the  most  open  hospitality,  and  permitted  himself  the 
luxury  of  a  private  theatre,  as  George  Sand  did  later 
at  Nohant,  and  also  of  a  church,  for  which  he  ob- 
tained a  relic  from  the  Pope.  He  dedicated  it  "  To 
God  from  Voltaire  "  (Deo  erexit  Voltaire),  and  ostenta- 
tiously communicated  there,  much  to  the  vexation  of 
his  bishop.  He  made  Ferney  what  Weimar  became 
a  half -century  later,  —  the  Mecca  of  literary  Europe. 
All  flocked  to  do  him  homage ;  few  had  the  temerity 
to  oppose  his  dicta.  His  influence,  both  in  literature 
and  ethics,  was  felt  over  all  the  Continent,  and  main- 
tained by  epigrams  in  meteoric  showers,  and  by  letters 
that  made  the  circuit  of  the  literary  world.  These 
last,  of  which  the  complete  edition  of  his  works  counts 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  89 

some  ten  thousand,  were  the  chief  source  of  his  power, 
and  perhaps  the  master  work  of  his  genius. 

The  most  enduring  works  of  this  period  are,  first  of 
all,  "  Candide, "  a  prose  tale  directed  against  the  re- 
ceived orthodoxy  rather  than  against  anything  distinc- 
tively Christian,  and  for  irony  perhaps  unsurpassed  in 
modern  times;  then  the  "  Commentary  on  Corneille," 
generously  undertaken  to  relieve  the  necessities  of  that 
dramatist's  niece;  but  perhaps  most  of  all,  the  pam- 
phlets written  in  defence  of  liberty  of  thought  and 
against  the  tyranny  of  persecution,  as  it  was  even  then 
being  illustrated  in  France  in  the  cases  of  Galas,  of 
Sirven,  of  Espinasse,  and  others.  That  these  men 
were  mostly  Protestants  was  natural,  for  only  Cath- 
olics had  the  power  to  stifle  thought,  though  the 
Huguenots  might  share  the  desire.  The  creed  for 
which  they  suffered  contributed  nothing  to  the  inter- 
est he  felt  in  their  wrongs.  Indeed  he  had  not  a  whit 
more  sympathy  with  the  infallible  Bible  than  with 
the  infallible  Pope,  and,  like  Erasmus,  he  had  no 
wish  to  break  with  authority  on  a  matter  so  uncertain, 
so  incapable  of  proof,  and  to  him  so  unimportant  as 
orthodoxy,  if  he  could  but  secure  toleration.  His 
often  repeated  exhortation  "  Ecrasez  1'infame  "  does 
not  allude,  as  some  have  vainly  supposed,  to  the 
essence  of  Christianity,  still  less  to  the  Christ,  but  to 
bigoted  intolerance  based  on  ignorance  and  self- 
seeking,  such  as  he  thought  he  found  exemplified 
in  the  Jesuits  of  his  time  and  their  helpers,  Frdron 
and  Palissot;  though  Voltaire's  ethics  were  really 
more  antagonistic  to  Jansenists  than  to  Jesuits. 
They  continued  the  traditions  of  Eabelais  and  La 
Fontaine,  but  with  a  naturalism  that  is  less  rationalis- 
tic than  hedonistic. 


90  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

Many  years  were  passed  at  Ferney  in  dignified  ease, 
and  Voltaire  was  a  frail  old  man  of  eighty-four  when 
the  triumphs  of  Beaumarchais'  "  Barber  of  Seville  " 
roused  his  vanity  for  a  journey  to  Paris  to  witness  the 
production  of  his  own  just  completed  "  Irene. "  Its 
sixth  performance,  March  16,  1778,  was  an  unequalled 
ovation  for  its  laurel-crowned  author,  and  one  of  the 
three  or  four  great  days  of  French  theatrical  history. 
Soon  after,  Franklin  brought  him  his  grandson  to  be 
blessed,  and  at  a  solemn  stance  of  the  Academy  they 
embraced  in  true  sentimental  style.  He  even  began 
another  tragedy ;  but  the  old  man  had  over-estimated 
the  power  of  his  body  to  follow  his  tireless  mind. 
Presently  came  a  collapse  of  physical  strength  so  rapid 
that  when  the  hour  came  at  which  all  Catholics  desire 
the  last  sacraments,  he  had  no  longer  sufficient  self- 
control  to  maintain  the  solemn  farce  of  a  lifetime. 
He  motioned  the  priest  away,  with  a  weak  sincerity 
that  would  surely  have  cast  a  gloom  over  his  last 
moments  had  it  been  granted  him  to  recover  a  con- 
sciousness of  his  inconsistency.  Dying  thus  (May 
30-31),  it  was  necessary  to  inter  him  in  haste,  before 
the  episcopal  inhibition  should  intervene  to  exclude 
him  from  consecrated  ground.  In  1791  the  remains 
were  taken  to  the  Pantheon;  but  the  sarcophagus, 
when  opened  in  1864,  was  found  empty,  the  mocker 
mocking  even  from  the  grave. 

We  have  now  to  consider  the  work  of  Voltaire,  and 
with  it  the  work  of  his  lesser  contemporaries  in  the 
various  fields  of  his  multifarious  activity. 

In  lyric  poetry  not  much  could  be  expected  of  a 
period  that  continued  the  traditions  of  classical  objec- 
tivity. 1  The  first  place  during  the  earlier  half  of  the 

1  Cp.  Brunetiere,  Poesie  lyrique,  i.  48. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH  CENTURY.          91 

century  belongs  undoubtedly  to  Jean-Baptiste  Eousseau 
(1670-1741),  who,  like  Voltaire,  was  associated  with 
the  coterie  "  du  Temple, "  and,  like  him,  was  in  con- 
stant trouble  because  he  could  bridle  neither  his  tongue 
nor  his  pen.  He,  too,  was  exiled  in  1712,  and  passed 
the  rest  of  his  life  at  Brussels,  continuing  more  indus- 
trious to  make  enemies  than  others  are  to  get  friends. 
His  poetic  work  is  not  large.  It  consists  mainly  of 
panegyric  or  sacred  odes,  apparently  studied  from 
Boileau,  and  of  licentious  or  cynical  epigrams,  which 
show  the  greater  talent  of  the  two,  and  passed  with 
the  classical  critics  for  an  imitation  of  Marot's  "  e'le'- 
gant  badinage, "  as  the  odes  did  of  his  "  Psalms.  "  But 
J. -B.  Eousseau  was  neither  a  great  man  nor  a  great 
poet,  and  to  say  that  he  was  the  best  of  his  time  may 
excuse  from  speaking  of  his  fellows. 

A  generation  later  than  Eousseau  is  Piron  (1689- 
1773),  probably  after  Voltaire  the  most  brilliant  epi- 
grammatist of  France,  but  too  witty  to  be  on  good 
terms  with  his  fellow  wits,  and  too  incapable,  as  his 
dramas  showed,  of  any  sustained  effort,  though  many 
of  the  best  lines  of  his  sparkling  comedy,  "  La  Me'tro- 
manie, "  have  passed  into  the  small  change  of  cultured 
conversation.  Another  writer  of  light  verse  is  Gresset, 
a  "  one-poem  poet.  "  His  ;<  Vert- Vert, "  a  parrot  who 
passes  from  a  monastery  to  a  nunnery  and  picks  up 
phrases  far  from  monastic  on  the  journey,  is  perhaps 
the  best  in  its  kind  since  La  Fontaine,  and  shows  a 
more  kindly  humor  than  the  "  Contes  "  of  Voltaire  or 
the  work  of  his  other  contemporaries.  Gresset,  for  the 
greater  part  of  his  life,  was  connected  with  a  religious 
order,  and  he  is  one  of  the  very  few  poets  of  this  time 
who  never  pander  to  vice;  but  his  character,  though 
gentle,  was  weak,  and  the  close  of  his  life  was  wholly 


92  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

under  the  direction  of  those  who  thought  the  graceful 
badinage  of  "  Vert- Vert  "  a  matter  for  fasting  and  pen- 
ance. Later  fabulists,  Florian  and  Marmontel,  pre- 
served the  traditions  of  the  apologue ;  but  their  work 
has  only  historic  interest. 

In  the  honeyed,  amorous,  or  licentious  verse  of 
the  "  glow-worm  "  type,  Voltaire  was  surpassed,  and 
might  well  be  content  to  be,  by  the  perfumed  lu- 
bricity of  Gentil-Bernard,  Dorat,  and  Parny,  the  last 
a  Creole  who  brought  at  first  some  breath  of  fresh  life 
into  French  verse,  but  later  lost  this  facile  touch,  so 
that  his  longer  poems  have  been  judiciously  pronounced 
a  equally  remarkable  for  blasphemy,  obscenity,  extrav- 
agance, and  dulness. "  It  must  be  allowed  that  if  in 
this  century  there  is  no  verse  that  is  extremely  good, 
there  is  much  that  is  extremely  bad,  and  very  little 
that  is  worse  than  these  later  poems  of  Parny.  But 
the  best  in  this  kind  are  only  triflers.  Much  later 
and  a  step  higher  are  the  anacreontic  Desaugiers 
and  Eouget  de  Lisle,  whose  immortal  "  Marseillaise  " 
is  less  characteristic  than  his  convivial  verses,  which 
mark  the  true  ancestor  of  Be'ranger.  In  the  descriptive 
school  of  poetry  this  century  pointed  with  pride  to 
Delille,  the  French  Thomson,  whose  insatiate  thirst 
for  paraphrase  turns  backgammon  into  "  that  noisy 
game  where  horn  in  hand  the  adroit  player  calculates 
an  uncertain  chance, "  while  sugar  masquerades  as  "  the 
American  honey  which  the  African  squeezes  from  the 
juicy  reed.  "  Poetry  became  a  puzzle  till  the  revolt  of 
the  Eomanticists  brought  plain  speaking  and  the  mot- 
propre  into  fashion  again,  substituting  virility  for 
these  elaborate  conceits. 

It  need  not  be  said  that  Voltaire  had  cultivated  all 
these  fields  except  the  sacred  canticle.  He  had  written 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  93 

also  the  only  serious  epic  of  the  century  worthy  to  be 
named,  though  "  La  Henriade  "  is  poor  enough  in  its 
jejune  correctness;  and  his  "  La  Pucelle,"  with  all  its 
faults,  is  still  the  best  comic  epic  of  France.  His 
versified  "  Contes, "  though  malicious  in  their  ethical 
bearing,  are  the  wittiest  and  best  told  since  La  Fon- 
taine, and  his  satires  are  hardly  second  to  the  best 
work  of  Re*gnier  and  Boileau.  No  man  had  so  great  a 
command  of  vers  de  societe  as  he.  He  never  rose  to 
true  poetry ;  that  divine  spark  was  denied  him.  He 
lacked  the  sincerity  that  springs  from  noble  convic- 
tions. But  he  produced  an  enormous  mass  of  what 
has  been  justly  called  the  "  ne  plus  ultra  of  verse 
that  is  not  poetry. " 

Yet  the  taste  for  a  truer  poetry  was  not  dead  in 
France.  These  years  saw  a  revival  of  interest  in  the 
great  sixteenth-century  poets;  a  collection  of  the  old 
"  Fabliaux  "  was  reprinted,  as  well  as  the  works  of 
Marot,  Villon,  and  Rabelais ;  all  of  which  had  its 
reward  in  the  Romantic  School  of  1830.  But  it  was 
reserved  for  the  very  close  of  the  century  to  produce  a 
true  poet,  and  to  guillotine  him  just  as  he  had  revealed 
his  promise.  Andre*  Che'nier  (1762-1794),  Greek  by 
birth,  half  Greek  by  parentage,  wholly  classical  in 
tastes  and  studies,  attained  the  aspiration  of  the 
Classicists.  But,  in  spite  of  Che'nier's  genius,  the 
more  fully  he  realized  his  ambition,  the  more  artificial 
he  became ;  and  so  he  had  little  influence  in  speeding 
or  retarding  the  development  of  the  Romantic  School, 
which  indeed  was  well  advanced  before  the  tardy  pub- 
lication of  the  greater  and  better  part  of  his  poems 
(1819). 

In  regular  tragedy  that  had  languished  since  the 
death  of  Racine,  Voltaire's  supremacy  was  not  ques- 


94  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

tioned.1  Indeed,  what  deserves  mention  outside  his 
work  does  so  almost  wholly  because  it  points  to  a  revolt 
from  traditions  that  he  was  anxious  to  maintain. 
Among  his  fifty  pieces  the  comedies  are  less  good  than 
one  would  anticipate  from  the  general  character  of  his 
mind ;  even  "  Nanine, "  which  he  drew  from  Eichard- 
son's  "  Pamela, "  is  only  the  best  among  second-class 
work.  But  if  he  never  thoroughly  mastered  the  tech- 
nique of  comedy,  his  best  tragedies,  some  ten,  approach 
more  nearly  to  the  correctness  of  Eacine  than  any  work 
of  an  age  that  had  nothing  to  suggest  the  grandeur 
of  Corneille,  still  less  the  profound  psychology  of 
Moliere;  he  was  the  inventor  of  "  local  color "  in  tra- 
gedy, and  in  the  dexterous  management  of  the  tragic 
form  he  may  have  surpassed  in  "  Mdrope  "  and  "  Zaire  " 
either  of  his  great  predecessors.  His  idea  was  to  per- 
fect the  tragedy  of  Eacine,  itself  the  most  perfect  in 
his  view  that  the  human  mind  had  yet  produced.  This 
he  hoped  to  attain  by  increasing  the  action  and  height- 
ening the  spectacular  effect.  But  while  he  laid  stress 
rightly  on  these  elements  of  interest,  he  found  him- 
self unconsciously  carried  away  from  Eacine,  toward 
the  processes  of  Corneille,  and  even  to  the  Shakspere 
he  rejected.  Yet  his  reforms  seem  timid  enough  to- 
day, and  at  the  time  attracted  little  animadversion. 

For  a  bolder  note  of  revolt  had  been  sounded  by 
Lamotte's  attack  on  the  regular  tragedy,  challenging 
the  authority  of  the  unities  and  the  prestige  of  the 
ancients,  though  in  his  own  best  drama,  "  Inez  de 
Castro, "  Lamotte  had  lacked  the  courage  of  his  convic- 
tions. These  were,  indeed,  far  in  advance  of  his  time, 
and  the  contemporary  tragedians,  Crdbillon  p^re  and 

1  Cp.  Brunetiere,  6poques  du  theatre  fran^ais,  p.  240,  and  Histoire 
et  litterature,  iii.  95. 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  95 

his  fellows,  kissed  the  rod  of  tradition  and  of  Voltaire, 
though  Crdbillon  has  occasional  bursts  of  more  Cor- 
neillian  power  than  Voltaire  ever  attains.  But  he  had 
also  more  Eomantic  exaggeration,  and  his  characters 
show  even  less  of  the  unconquerable  mind,  the  strong 
will,  that  distinguished  Corneille.  Late  in  the  century 
the  standard  of  revolt  was  again  raised  by  Ducis,  who 
adapted  several  plays  of  Shakspere  to  French  taste, 
between  1767  and  1792,  and  broke  the  way  for  greater 
successors. 

But  besides  these  revolts  from  regular  tragedy,  a 
radical  modification  of  it  appeared  during  this  century 
in  the  tragedy  of  common  life,  which,  with  a  parallel 
breaking  down  of  the  regular  comedy  to  the  comedy 
of  pathos,  confused  the  distinctions  which  had  sep- 
arated the  tragedy  and  comedy  of  the  Classicists.  Then 
the  tragedie  bourgeoise  and  the  comedie  larmoyante 
inevitably  merged  into  the  melodrama,  or  drame, 
fathered  by  La  Chausse'e1  and  ably  advocated  by 
Diderot.2  The  essence  of  all  this  work  is  that  the 
scenes  shall  be  taken  from  contemporary  life  in  its 
serious  or  serio-comic  aspects.  But  though  these  be- 
ginnings of  a  very  large  and  important  section  of  the 
modern  drama  are  of  great  historic  interest,  intrinsi- 
cally they  present  little  that  is  worthy  to  survive. 

In  comedy,  Voltaire's  best  work  was  outranked  both 
by  his  predecessor,  Le  Sage,  and  by  his  successor, 
Beaumarchais,  while  Destouches,  Marivaux,  and  Se- 
daine  were  his  not  unworthy  compeers.  Le  Sage 
(1668-1747),  who  is  better  known  as  the  author  of 
"  Gil  Bias, "  wrote  also  a  multitude  of  short  farces 

1  See  Lanson,  La  Chausse'e ;  Brunetiere,  £poques  du  theatre  fran- 
9ais,  p.  275  sqq. 

2  In  his  "Essai  sur  la  poesie  dramatique,"  1758. 


96  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

and  operettas  which  stood  in  high  repute ;  while  his 
"  Crispin  "  and  "  Tucaret "  are  true  comedies,  quite 
worthy  of  Moliere.  Both  are  prose  studies  of  contem- 
porary society,  —  the  former  more  lively  than  probable, 
but  scintillating  with  wit  and  palpitating  with  comic 
life ;  the  latter  more  seriously  critical,  a  cruel  and 
realistic  satire  on  the  moneyed  class  that  was  already 
beginning  to  contest  the  social  pre-eminence  of  the 
corrupted  nobility,  which  in  its  turn  received  merited 
castigation,  while  provincial  narrowness  and  mercantile 
pettiness  were  not  spared,  and  the  characters  in  both 
plays,  as  we  should  expect  from  his  novels,  were  more 
completely  rounded  than  the  typical  figures  of  Moliere. 

But  if  Le  Sage,  at  his  best,  leads  the  stage  in  the 
former  half  of  the  century,  Destouches  is  not  far  be- 
hind, and  his  work  maintains  a  remarkable  level  of 
excellence,  though  he  never  deserts  the  typical  method 
of  Moliere  and  Ee'gnard.  His  "  Philosophe  marie*  " 
and  "  Les  Glorieux  "  have  life  in  them  still.  In  Dan- 
court,  too,  one  may  trace  the  evolution  of  the  comedy 
of  condition  from  that  of  character.  Where  Moliere, 
Ee'gnard,  and  Le  Sage  had  sought  to  combine  various 
phases  of  a  social  vice  into  the  miser,  the  misanthrope, 
the  gambler,  or  the  financier,  he  divides  the  phases 
among  a  group  of  characters,  and  writes  of  "  Les 
Agioteurs, "  "  Les  Bourgeoises  a  la  mode, "  or  "  Les 
Enfants  de  Paris. " 

Marivaux  was  a  man  of  more  originality,  both  for 
good  and  ill,  in  the  drama  and  the  novel  also.  His 
manner  was  sufficiently  unique  to  furnish  to  the  lan- 
guage the  word  marivaitdage,  which  now  stands  for  a 
rather  effeminate  wit  and  affectation  of  simplicity. 
But  Marivaux  was  better  than  this  word  might  im- 
ply. He  was,  above  all  else,  a  delicate,  subtle,  precieux 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  97 

psychologist ;  and  his  dramatic  mission  was  the  apology 
of  sentiment  and  the  analysis  of  love,  till  then  hardly 
attempted  in  comedy.  This  gave  to  women  an  equal 
prominence  with  men  in  the  drama.  In  Moliere  the 
tender  passion  is  assumed  as  a  state ;  with  Marivaux 
it  is  a  development.  His  dramas  begin  with  the 
dawn  of  love,  and  end  usually  with  its  declaration. 
As  he  said  himself,  "  he  spied  out  in  the  human  heart 
all  the  nooks  where  love  might  hide  when  he  feared 
to  show  himself,  and  the  object  of  each  of  his  comedies 
was  to  make  love  come  out  of  one  of  those  nooks ;  "  to 
which  Brunetiere  adds  that  if  you  substitute  jealousy 
for  love,  you  will  define  the  tragedy  of  Racine.  They 
are  trifles  light  as  air,  but  delicious  in  their  apparent 
naivete*  and  hidden  depth.  There  is,  indeed,  little  or 
no  intrigue,  and  so  there  is  danger  of  monotony  if  his 
plays  l  be  read  consecutively;  but  it  is  a  relief  to  find 
the  old  theatrical  apparatus  and  conventions  laid  aside 
with  a  light  heart  for  stories  that  transport  us  to  a 
delicate  and  amiable  fairyland,  where  we  recognize 
ourselves  as  we  should  like  to  be.  But  though  the 
idea  of  the  development  of  love  as  a  subject  for  comedy 
was  a  most  fruitful  seed,  and  all  his  successors  profited 
by  it  according  to  their  power,  Marivaux  founded  no 
school ;  for  as  the  century  proceeded,  the  dramatic  cur- 
rent was  deflected  by  the  stronger  philosophical  bent 
The  desire  to  sway  the  feelings  and  to  preach  a  shal- 
low, sentimental  optimism  takes  possession  of  the 
stage  under  the  banner  of  naturalism  in  the  Tragedie 
bourgeoise,  or  of  pathetic  sentiment  in  the  Comedie 

1  The  best  are  "  Le  Legs,"  "  Double  inconstance,"  "  Jen  d'amour 
et  du  hazard."  See  Larroumet,  Marivaux  ;  Faguet,  xviii.  siecle ;  Lan- 
son,  Litterature,  p.  639  ;  Brunetiere,  Etudes  critiques,  vols.  ii.  and  iii. ; 
Brunetiere,  &poques  du  theatre ;  Lemaitre,  Impressions  de  theatre, 
vols.  ii.  and  iv. 

7 


98  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

larmoyante.  The  development  is  interesting,  but,  as 
has  been  said,  the  plays  that  illustrate  it  deserve  no 
individual  notice. 

This  change  is  often  attributed  to  Diderot ;  but  the 
reflected  lustre  of  his  achievements  in  literature  and 
philosophy  has  probably  made  men  attribute  to  him 
dramatic  services  that  belong  to  his  predecessors,  no- 
tably to  Marivaux,  Larnotte,  and  Destouches. l  His 
plays,  "  Le  Fils  naturel "  and  "  Le  Pere  de  f amille, " 
were  unfortunate  illustrations  of  excellent  theories, 
derived  in  part  from  the  German  Lessing,  whom  in 
turn  they  inspired ;  but  there  was  nothing  new  in  his 
ideas,  nothing  that  had  not  been  anticipated  for  the 
pathetic  comedy  by  La  Chausse'e,  while  in  tragedy 
Lamotte  had  demanded  the  use  of  prose  and  more  action 
as  early  as  1721,  frankly  setting  up  the  English  stand- 
ard for  imitation.  But  if  Diderot  was  neither  first  to 
preach  nor  to  practise  either  the  bourgeois  tragedy  or 
melodrama,  neither  was  he  the  most  eloquent  pro- 
claimer  of  the  new  doctrine,  for  that  leaf  must  be 
added  to  the  dubious  laurels  of  Eousseau.  Indeed,  his 
original  theory  that  the  drama  should  present  condi- 
tions rather  than  characters,  "  that  the  profession 
should  become  the  principal  object  and  the  character 
only  accessory,"  was  rather  retrogressive  in  its  ten- 
dency, though  it  helped,  perhaps,  to  turn  the  drama- 
tists of  the  later  nineteenth  century  to  the  modification 
of  character  by  profession  or  environment,  which  is  an 
important  factor  in  the  realistic  art  of  Dumas  fits  and 
Smile  Augier. 

More  truly  and  less  obtrusively  philosophic  than  the 

1  See  Ducros,  Diderot,  Paris,  1894;  Reinach,  Diderot,  Paris,  1894  ; 
and  a  notice  of  these  books  by  Lemaitre  in  "Journal  des  debats" 
(Hebd.),  4th  and  llth  August,  1894. 


THE  EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  99 

men  of  whom  we  have  just  spoken  is  Beauinarchais,1 
the  most  important  dramatic  figure  in  the  latter  part 
of  the  century,  though  he  was  the  author  of  but  two 
really  successful  plays.  Beaumarchais  had  seen  more 
of  social  life  than  any  of  his  predecessors ;  for  though, 
like  Eousseau,  the  son  of  a  watchmaker,  he  had  in- 
gratiated himself  by  skill  and  good  fortune  in  court 
circles,  where  he  made  a  wealthy  marriage  and  in- 
fluential connections  in  banking  circles,  while  his 
"  Memoirs, "  by  their  scathing  exposure  of  the  corrup- 
tion of  an  unpopular  Parlement,  made  him  popular  also 
with  the  influential  bourgeoisie.  A  visit  to  England, 
undertaken  in  the  government  interest,  had  much 
influence  on  the  relations  of  France  to  the  North 
American  colonies,  then  about  to  revolt  from  England ; 
and  its  literary  effect  on  Beaumarchais  was  almost  as 
determining  as  it  had  been  on  Voltaire,  for  it  needed 
only  that  to  his  knowledge  of  society  and  the  reckless- 
ness characteristic  at  once  of  the  spirit  of  the  time  and 
of  his  own,  there  should  be  added  the  art  of  English 
comedy  to  inspire  his  native  wit  with  the  epoch- 
making  "  Barber  of  Seville  "  (1775)  and  the  "  Marriage 
of  Figaro  "  (1784).  Barber  Figaro,  the  hero  of  both 
plays,  is  a  light-hearted,  versatile,  shrewd  scapegrace, 
with  a  good  deal  of  that  worldly  philosophy  which 
was  assisting  in  the  disintegration  of  society,  and  pre- 
paring the  Eevolution  which  these  comedies,  by  their 
levelling  tendencies,  did  much  to  provoke  and  to  has- 
ten ;  though  Beaumarchais  had  probably  no  more  serious 
purpose  than  delight  in  his  own  wit.  He  wished  to 
fire  a  squib  and  exploded  the  magazine.2 

1  See  Lintilhac,  Beaumarchais. 

2  Modern  types  of  Figaro   are   to    be   found  in  Augier's  "Les 
Effrontes  "  and  "  Le  Fils  de  Giboyer."    The  political  satire  finds  a 
more  serious  parallel  in  Sardou's  "  Ragabas."    Sae  Brunetiere,  1.  c.  297. 


100  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

These  comedies  mark  a  decided  advance  in  the  de- 
velopment of  dialogue,  which  becomes  more  precise, 
epigrammatic,  and  clear-cut.  Beaumarchais'  spark- 
ling verve  is  sustained  in  a  way  till  then  approached 
only  by  Moliere,  and  hardly  attained  even  by  him. 
Indeed,  it  will  often  seem  that  the  author  is  too 
prodigal,  or  that  his  hearers  were  men  of  quicker  wits 
than  ours ;  for  we  hardly  conceive  that  such  keenness 
and  brilliancy  should  be  fully  valued  at  one  reading, 
still  less  when  heard  but  once  on  the  stage.  If  it  were 
not  a  paradox,  one  would  be  inclined  to  say  that  the 
chief  fault  of  Beaumarchais  is  the  monotony  of  his 
scintillating  brilliancy.  But,  besides  this,  in  con- 
struction and  the  management  of  intrigue,  the  plays 
touched  the  high -water  mark  of  the  century.  "  Origi- 
nal, incomparable,  inimitable,  unique,"  they  earned 
an  unparalleled  success,  and  left  a  tradition  that  after 
four  decades  of  woful  mediocrity  was  revived  by  Hugo 
and  Dumas,  and  inspired  the  operas  of  Mozart  and 
Rossini. 

This  intervening  mediocrity  was  due  in  great  meas- 
ure to  the  deadening  effect  of  sentimentality,1  and  to 
the  engrossing  interest  of  politics.  From  1789  till 
the  end  of  the  century,  plays  were  more  often  praised 
and  damned  for  their  sentiments  than  for  their  merits. 
The  history  of  the  stage  during  these  years  is  of  great 
interest,  but  it  belongs  no  longer  to  the  history  of  lit- 
erature. 2  Yet  the  drama  of  the  century  as  a  whole, 
though  in  no  sense  great,  was  at  least  superior  to  its 
poetry,  and  showed  surer  signs  of  the  Eomantic 
awakening. 

1  See  Diderot  as  cited  by  Brunetiere,  1.  c.  294. 

2  See  Lumiere,  Le  Theatre  f rai^ais  pendant  la  revolution ;  Wel- 
scbinger,  Le  The'atre  de  la  revolution  ;  and  Brunetiere,  Etudes  critiques, 
ii.  322. 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  101 

During  this  whole  period  prose  had  been  encroach- 
ing on  the  domain  of  dramatic  poetry,  and  after  its 
close  the  alexandrine  enjoyed  only  an  asthmatic  re- 
vival. It  is  in  this  century  that  prose  becomes  the 
natural  vehicle  of  almost  every  phase  of  thought  and 
feeling,  occupying  a  far  more  varied,  vast,  and  im- 
portant field  than  ever  before,  and  for  the  first  time 
surpassing  verse  in  literary  value.  This  is  pre-emi- 
nently the  century  of  the  "  philosophers, "  the  age  of 
scientific  inquiry  and  of  comparative  study  of  history 
and  institutions.  And  though  it  is  true  that  none  of 
these  fields  belongs  to  pure  literature,  many  of  these 
works  show  such  intrinsic  beauty  and  had  such  influ- 
ence on  imaginative  prose  that  no  literary  study  can 
ignore  them. 

The  first  of  the  historians  of  this  century  belongs 
rather  to  the  preceding.  The  "  Memoirs  "  of  Saint- 
Simon  (1678-1755)  show  the  unreconciled  feudal  noble, 
while  his  treatment  of  language  is  as  autocratic  as 
though  Balzac  and  Vaugelas  had  lived  in  vain.  As  a 
contemporary  said,  "  Saint-Simon  saw  the  nation  in  the 
nobility,  the  nobility  in  the  peerage,  and  the  peerage 
in  himself.  "  These  "  Memoirs, "  often  amusing,  some- 
times exasperating,  are  always  valuable  for  the  history 
of  their  time;  but  they  are  not  characteristic  of  its 
literary  or  intellectual  movement.  In  Eollin  (1661- 
1741),  on  the  other  hand,  the  literary  instinct  wholly 
predominated.  Entirely  engrossed  in  making  himself 
clear  and  his  subject  interesting,  he  does  not  rise 
above  the  amiable  raconteur.  This  would  apply  also 
to  Voltaire's  "  Charles  XII.  "  and  "  Peter  the  Great;  " 
but  in  his  "  Essai  sur  les  moeurs  et  1 'esprit  des 
nations, "  Voltaire  shows,  and  is  first  to  show,  a  genuine 
effort  to  study  the  development  of  civilization  under 


102  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

the  varying  conditions  of  character  and  destiny ;  and 
thus,  though  he  could  not  emancipate  himself  from  the 
passions  of  his  time  nor  observe  without  prejudice, 
though  the  age  of  Louis  XIV.  was  to  him  "  the  most 
glorious  epoch  of  the  human  mind  "  in  spite  of  "  the 
tricky  and  meddling  clergy  that  marred  it,"  though 
the  story  of  Charles  Martel  and  Eoland  "  deserved  no 
more  to  be  written  than  that  of  bears  and  wolves/ 
though  he  saw  in  religion  everywhere  and  always  the 
chief  obstacle  to  human  progress,  yet  he  inaugurated 
in  this  essay  the  science  of  comparative  history. 

In  this  field  he  was  almost  immediately  followed  by 
Montesquieu,  —  a  far  more  catholic  spirit,  and  without 
a  trace  of  the  iconoclastic  optimism  so  general  in  his 
time.  Already,  in  1721,  his  "  Lettres  persanes  "  had 
shown  him  a  keen  critic  of  contemporary  society,  its 
foibles,  its  government,  and  its  creed.  A  more  serious 
and  truly  philosophic  mind  appeared  in  his  "  Grandeur 
and  Decadence  of  the  Eomans  "  (1734);  and  this  was 
but  a  foretaste  of  the  great  "  Spirit  of  Laws  "  (1748), 
f  jwhere  the  relations  of  law  to  government,  manners, 
climate,  religion._and  trade  were  discussed  with  a 
|  sweep  of  vision  that  embraced  every  age  and  country. 
In  it  all,  however,  Montesquieu  was  a  student  much 
more  than  a  reformer,  —  more  eager  to  see  how  what  is 
came  to  be  than  to  think  how  he  can  make  it  better. 
But  though  he  was  not  himself  a  revolutionist,  nor 
incited  to  change,  his  book,  by  calling  attention  to  the 
superiority  of  the  English  constitution,  had  an  immense 
and  enduring  influence  in  determining  the  destinies  of 
France  and  of  the  whole  Continent,  which  has  come 
more  and  more  to  the  constitutionalism  of  which  he 
was  the  greatest  herald. 

Another  historian,  who  left  a  far  different  impress 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  103 

on  the  time,  was  Mably,  whose  perversely  persistent 
exaltation  of  a  false  classicism  took  a  hold  on  the  pop- 
ular fancy  that  explains  much  of  the  masquerading  of 
the  early  revolutionary  period.  More  directly  political 
in  its  tone  was  Kay  rial's  "  Histoire  philosophique  des 
Indes, "  —  a  co-operative  work,  that  pretends  to  be  a 
colonial  history  and  is  really  a  demagogic  declamation, 
of  which  a  single  example  may  suffice.  "  Cowardly 
people,  imbecile  herd, "  says  the  historian,  "  you  are 
content  to  groan  when  you  should  roar. "  What  must 
the  philosophic  princes  have  thought  of  this,  the  Aus- 
trian Joseph,  the  Czarina  Catherine,  and  King  Fred- 
eric, who  had  trusted  the  charmer  of  Ferney  when  he 
said  that  "  the  cause  of  the  philosophers  was  the  cause 
of  the  princes  "  ?  They  might  see  now  that  the  attack 
on  the  Church  inevitably  reacted  on  the  divine  right  of 
royalty,  and  that  history  was  only  a  pulpit  for  the 
"  philosophers, "  who  soon  found  their  voices  drowned 
by  the  revolutionary  orators,  Mirabeau,  Barnave, 
Vergniaud,  Danton,  —  a  race  silenced  and  superseded 
by  the  man  of  the  18th  Brumaire. 

Never  have  self-styled  "  philosophers  "  exercised  so 
direct  an  influence  on  society  as  in  France  at  this 
time.  Among  them  Voltaire  holds  the  chief  and  cen- 
tral place ;  but  the  radical  group  at  his  left  is  more 
witty,  keen,  vigorous,  and  loud  than  the  conservatives 
who  make  but  a  poor  and  timid  show  in  defence  of  in- 
herited faith.  This  new  philosophy  drew  its  inspira- 
tion from  England,  chiefly  from  Locke ;  and,  like  him, 
the  French  metaphysicians  aimed  to  be  clear  rather 
than  profound,  gliding  over  difficulties  and  aspiring  to 
systematic  completeness  at  the  cost  sometimes  of  com- 
mon-sense. Voltaire  almost  boasts  of  his  superficiality. 
"  Throw  my  work  into  the  fire, "  he  exclaims,  "  if  it  is 


\ 


104  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

not  as  clear  as  a  fable  of  La  Fontaine. "     Or  again, 

I"  The  French  have  no  idea  how  much  trouble  I  take  to 
give  them  no  trouble.  "  But  he  was  seldom  anxious  to 
push  his  thought  to  its  legitimate  conclusion.  He 
used  it  as  a  solvent  of  old,  incrusted  prejudices,  not 
as  a  rule  of  new  life.  He  remained  a  deist,  and 
showed  more  than  once  that  his  faith  was  real  and  not 
conventional.  This  antithesis  between  his  philosophy 
and  his  creed  bore  good  fruit ;  it  made  him  the  elo- 
quent and  successful  preacher  of  toleration. 

His  successors  were  more  consistent.  Condillac 
forced  sensationalism  to  a  dizzy  brink,  where  Diderot 
and  La  Mettrie  nursed  their  pure  materialism.  And 
from  this  verge  Helve'tius  and  D'Holbach  soon  "took  the 
step  that  landed  them  in  a  cynical  atheism  which  pro- 
voked a  protest  even  from  Frederic  and  Voltaire.  But 
they  could  not  banish  the  spirit  they  had  conjured,  a 
ruthless  iconoclasrn  that  found  its  fullest  representa- 
tive in  the  "  Encyclopedic, "  l  the  joint  production  of 
Diderot,  D'Alembert,  and  most  of  the  radical  think- 
ers of  the  time.  The  reception  given  to  their  work 
amply  testifies  that  these  men  were  in  accord  with  the 
people.  The  forty -five  hundred  copies  of  its  twenty- 
eight  folio  volumes  were  hardly  dry  before  they  were 
sold,  and  the  last  set  brought  the  price  of  rarity.  Vol- 
taire's contributions  are  collected  in  his  "  Dictionnaire 
philosophique.  "  The  articles  are  full  of  personalities 
and  of  mocking  irreverence,  which  he  seemed  to  think 
justified  by  the  nature  of  his  adversaries  and  of  their 
cause.  Yet  they  form  some  of  the  most  characteristic 
and  typical  of  his  whole  "  hundred  volumes, "  and  are 
still  readable  in  spite  of  the  alphabetical  arrangement. 

1  An  admirable  account  of  this  work  is  contained  in  John  Morley's 
Diderot,  i.  113-241. 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  105 

Their  value,  however,  is  literary  and  not  philosophical, 
at  least  in  any  sense  that  we  now  attach  to  that  word. 

To  eighteenth-century  France  a  "  philosopher  "  is  a 
man  disabused  of  all  "  the  long  results  of  time,  *  ajnan 
who  looks  at  life  with  shrewd  but  shallow  common- 
sense.  And  until  it  was  weighed,  this  specious 
optimism  was  naturally  of  immense  popularity.  In- 
deed  the  philosophers  could  truly  say  that  the  world 
was  gone,  nfter  them.  The  mania  for  collections,  the 
dilettante  study  of  "  natural  history, "  date  from  this 
time.  Hundreds  busied  themselves  thus  with  physics 
and  chemistry,  and  it  was  especially  for  them  that 
Voltaire  had  popularized  Newton's  theories  in  his 
"  English  Letters. "  In  their  optimistic  hopefulness 
the  puzzle  of  Nature  seemed  almost  solved.  Like 
Wagner  in  Goethe's  "Faust,"  they  felt  they  knew 
much  and  hoped  to  know  all,  —  an  attitude  indicated 
by  the  inscription  on  Buff  on 's  statue  at  Versailles  :  "  A 
genius  equal  to  the  majesty  of  Nature. "  Indeed,  as 
they  approach  the  maelstrom  of  the  Revolution,  a  ver- 
tigo seems  to  seize  on  these  minds  cut  loose  from  the 
moorings  of  faith  and  drifting  into  unknown  seas. 
"  Enlightenment  is  so  diffused, "  says  Voltaire,  with 
his  genial  optimism,  "  that  there  must  be  an  outburst 
on  the  first  occasion.  .  .  .  Our  young  men  are  for- 
tunate. They  will  see  fine  things. "  But  he  looked 
at  the  matter  always  as  an  aristocrat.  "  As  for  the 
canaille,"  he  said,  "it  will  always  remain  canaille. 
I  do  not  concern  myself  with  it.  "  1  Eousseau  had  a 
truer  and  profounder  foresight.  "  Rely  not, "  he  says  1 
in  "  Bmile,"  "  on  the  existing  social  order,  forgetting  I 
that  this  order  is  subject  to  inevitable  revolutions,  and  | 
that  you  cannot  foresee  nor  prevent  what  may  come  on '» 

1  See  Brunetiere,  Etudes  critiques,  i.  181  sqq. 


106  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

your  children.  The  great  will  become  small,  the  rich 
poor,  the  monarch  subject.  We  approach  the  critical 
state  and  the  age  of  revolutions. " 

Rousseau,  not  Voltaire,  is  the  seer  of  the  closing 
century  ;  and  he  has  put  this  startling  prophecy,  not  in 
an  historical  or  philosophical  treatise,  but  in  a  novel, 
"  Emile, "  which,  with  his  "  Nouvelle  Heloise, "  exer- 
cised a  more  fateful  influence  on  mankind  than  any 
works  of  pure  imagination  that  literary  history  knows. 
So  we  are  brought  back  from  a  philosophical  digression 
to  pure  literature,  to  the  novelists  and  critics  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Criticism  may,  indeed,  be  briefly 
dismissed.  Voltaire  is  once  more  easily  first  with  his 
"  Commentary  on  Corneille ; "  but  Diderot's  annual 
"  Salons  "  1  were  epoch-making  for  the  rational  study 
of  art,  while  his  dramatic  essays  popularized  a  natural- 
ism that  they  did  not  originate,  and  the  "  Correspond- 
ence" 2  of  his  friend  Melchior  Grimm  with  German 
courts  may  still  be  read  with  interest  for  its  subjective 
originality.  Only  these  three  influenced  the  future; 
for  La  Harpe,  in  spite  of  his  contemporary  popular- 
ity, is  but  the  talented  representative  of  a  sterile 
conservatism. 

In  no  department  of  literature  was  progress  more 
varied  or  the  outlook  more  hopeful  during  this  entire 
period  than  in  prose  fiction,  which  was  replacing  the 
drama  as  the  chief  literary  genre.  Le  Sage  shares  with 
Voltaire  the  honors  of  the  first  rank;  but  excellent 
work  was  done  by  PreVost,  La  Clos,  and  Louvet,  in 


1  Brunetiere,  op.  ci't.  ii.  285,  criticises  them  very  severely. 

2  The  enterprise  begun  by  Eaynal  was  conducted  by  Grimm  from 
1753  to  1773,  and  continued  by  Meister  till  1790.     Diderot  and  Mme. 
d'^pernay  also  shared  in  it.    The  whole  is  best  edited  by  Tourneux, 
Paris,  1877  sqq. 


THE   EIGHTEENTH    CENTURY.  107 

the  psychological  novel;  by  Crdbillon  fils  and  Eestif 
de  la  Bretonne  in  the  tale;  by  Du  Laurens,  De  la 
Mettrie,  and  Diderot  in  the  Shandyesque  romance; 
while  Marivaux  furnished  delightfully  amusing  trifles, 
Florian,  the  gentle  officer  of  dragoons,  and  Marmontel, 
the  mild  pupil  of  Voltaire,  provided  didactic  sugar- 
pills,  and  the  Abbe*  Barthe'lemy  offered  a  huge  bolus  of 
the  same  tempting  character  in  the  six  stout  volumes 
of  the  "  Travels  of  the  Young  Anacharsis, "  which 
marks  a  revival  of  a  popular  interest  in  antiquity 
that  is  illustrated  also  by  the  poetry  of  Che'nier.  And 
then,  with  a  place  quite  unique  among  the  novelists  of 
the  world,  is  Eousseau,  the  prophet  of  the  new  era,  of 
sentiment  and  Nature.  ^  1  ^ 

Le  Sage,  though  he  was  no  mean  dramatist,  was  z~' 
much  greater  as  a  realistic  and  satirical  novelist,  and 
was,  indeed,  the  first  French  writer  of  fiction  who 
lived,  or  could  have  lived,  by  his  pen.  Like  Vol- 
taire, he  was  a  scholar  of  the  Jesuits,  and  educated  for 
the  law ;  but  while  Voltaire  drew  his  inspiration  from 
England,  Le  Sage  turned  rather  to  Spain.  The  title 
and  idea  of  "  Le  Diable  boiteux, "  his  first  independent 
essay  (1707),  was  borrowed  from  Guevara,  though  the 
work  itself  —  in  Scott's  opinion,  one  of  the  profoundest 
studies  of  human  character  —  owed  more  to  La  Bruyere. 
But  he  is  less  remembered  to-day  for  this  than  for  the 
equally  keen  and  more  entertaining  "  Gil  Bias  "  (1715- 
1735),  — a  book  singular  in  that  it  seems  to  belong 
rather  to  either  of  two  foreign  literatures  than  to  its 
own.  For  while  it  has  been  recognized  as  a  masterpiece 
in  France,  it  had  no  roots  in  the  past  of  French  litera- 
ture ;  and  its  form  was  so  closely  studied  from  the  Span- 
ish novela  picaresca,  that  over-zealous  Castilians  have 
actually  claimed  it  as  a  translation.  And  as  it  had  no 


108  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

ancestry  in  France,  so  it  had  no  immediate  posterity 
there,  but  rather  in  England,  in  the  work  of  Defoe  and 
Smollett,  though  Le  Sage  anticipated  many  features  of 
the  novel  of  low  life  and  the  naturalism  of  the  school 
of  Balzac. 

In  his  style,  Le  Sage  set  himself  against  what  he 
called  the  "  strained  diction  "  and  "  charms  more  bril- 
liant than  solid  "  of  Marivaux.  He  wished  to  be  clear, 
and,  above  all,  not  to  be  affected ;  and  he  moulded  to 
his  use  a  language  very  direct,  terse,  somewhat  theat- 
rical, but  yet  truly  popular.  If  "  Gil  Bias, "  as  a 
novel,  seems  at  times  prolix,  it  is  because  Le  Sage, 
like  a  novelistic  La  Bruyere,  is  not  content  to  show  a 
segment  of  society,  but  seeks  in  the  varying  fortunes 
of  his  hero  to  reveal  all  its  faults  and  foibles.  But  he 
shuns,  especially  in  the  admirable  third  part  (1734), 
the  exceptional,  and  deals  with  life  as  he  knows  it, 
and  with  average  men,  differing  thus  from  some  mod- 
ern realists  and  from  his  own  later  work.  For  there 
is  in  this  school  always  a  tendency  to  dwell  on  the 
picturesque  side  of  vagabond  life,  and  to  study  the 
abnormal  in  vice  rather  than  in  virtue.  Le  Sage,  in- 
deed, has  no  touch  of  the  pessimism  that  pervades  the 
modern  Naturalists.  Acquaintance  with  vice  is  but 
a  factor  in  bringing  Gil  to  virtue.  But  in  his  closer 
adaptations  from  the  Spanish,  "  Guzman  d'Alfarache  " 
(1732)  and  the  "  Bachelier  de  Salamanque  "  (1736), 
there  is  hardly  any  expression  of  moral  sympathy  at 
all,  —  a  fact  much  more  interesting  than  the  novels 
themselves ;  for  it  is  the  first  sign  of  that  weariness  of 
conscience  and  moral  apathy  that  was  presently  to 
reveal  itself  in  Voltaire's  "Pucelle, "  in  Diderot's 
"  Neveu  de  Eameau, "  and  in  the  work  of  the  later 
philosophers.  By  this  almost  alone  can  Le  Sage 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  109 

be    connected   with    the    fiction    of    his    century    in 
France.  /  V>7 

For  the  growth  of  the  novel  was  rather  on  psycho- 
logical lines.  Marivaux  (1688-1763),  without  being 
either  a  realist  or  a  moralist,  showed,  in  his  "  Specta- 
teur, "  that  he  was  a  very  keen  analyst  of  human  feel- 
ing ;  and  the  qualities  of  these  essays  appear  also  in  his 
best  novels,  —  "  Marianne  "  and  "  Le  Paysan  parvenu.  " 
The  former  is  a  delicate  dissection  of  coquetry;  the 
latter  traces  the  development  of  self-assurance  and 
effrontery  in  M.  Jacob,  the  successful  and  universal 
lover,  who  represents  a  sort  of  arrested  development 
of  Maupassant's  "  Bel-Ami,"  though  oftener  compared 
with  Moliere's  "  Don  Juan  "  and  George  Sand's  "  Leone 
Leoni.  "  In  both  novels,  however,  there  are  carefully 
drawn  pictures  of  contemporary  society,  and  some 
scenes  of  Parisian  street  life,  that  suggest  the  realistic 
vigor  of  Balzac.  Still,  it  is  the  psychological  study 
that  absorbs  Marivaux's  interest  and  his  reader's  also. 
No  writer  kills  off  or  abandons  his  characters  with 
more  nonchalance  when  they  begin  to  embarrass  him ; 
but,  even  so,  he  has  brought  neither  of  these  stories  to 
an  end.  In  him  first  we  notice  that  pre-eminence  is 
given  to  women,  and  also  the  curious  concomitance  of 
facile  shamelessness  with  a  romantic  and  sublimated 
conventional  sentimentality,  —  a  note  that  runs  through 
all  the  fiction  of  the  century,  reaching  its  height  in 
Eousseau;  a  double-twisted  thread  that  seldom  fails 
to  show  itself  both  in  the  loftiest  and  in  the  basest  of 
its  writers. 

This  peculiar  sentimental  strain  was  taken  up  with 
much  skill  and  some  mixture  of  romantic  idealism  in 
Provost's  "  Manon  Lescaut  "  (1731),  admirable  in  a 
rather  nauseating  kind.  In  a  style  whose  simple 


11Q  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

directness  is  the  highest  art,  he  tells  a  story  in 
which  one  knows  not  whether  to  wonder  most  at  the 
complacent  love  of  the  hero,  who  is  ever  ready  to 
pardon  venal  infidelity,  or  at  the  deathless  love  of  the 
frail  heroine,  who  can  resist  all  seductions  but  those 
of  good  wine  and  good  clothes.  As  an  analysis  of 
sentimentalism  degenerating  to  the  verge  of  drivelling 
inanity,  the  book  holds  an  eminence  that  may  long  be 
unrivalled.  Still  it  must  be  admitted  that  both  in 
"  Manon  "  and  in  his  now  forgotten  "  Cleveland, "  as 
well  as  by  his  translations  of  Richardson,  Provost 
did  much  to  illustrate  the  resources  and  direct  the 
growth  of  romantic  fiction. 

Yet  though  "  Manon  "  had  many  successors,  it  had 
no  memorable  ones  in  the  early  part  of  the  century. 
Indeed,  its  closest  counterpart  in  the  intertwining  of 
sentiment  and  lubricity,  Louvet's  "  Faublas, "  dates 
from  1786.  More  closely  resembling  Marivaux,  but 
without  his  depth,  are  the  stories  of  society  written  for 
the  amusement  of  an  idle  and  corrupt  aristocracy  by 
Cre'billon  fils,  son  of  the  dramatist,  and  by  the  equally 
immoral  but  more  delicate  La  Clos,  whose  "  Liaisons 
dangereuses  "  is  the  best  in  this  inferior  kind.  From 
amusement  to  instruction  is  not  a  long  step ;  but  the 
didactic  fiction  of  this  period,  though  voluminous,  is 
not  of  striking  excellence.  It  may  suffice  to  name 
the  "  gutter-Rousseau, "  Restif  de  la  Bretonne,  that 
"  genial  animal  "  who  is  quite  unrivalled  in  the  serious 
pedagogy  of  his  obscene  sentimentality;  and  at  the 
other  extreme,  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre,  in  whose 
didactic  idyls,  "  Paul  and  Virginia  "  and  "  La  Chau- 
miere  indienne, "  sentiment  reaches  the  acute  stage  of 
hyperaesthesia,  and  the  ethics,  like  Shakspere's  med- 
lars, are  "  rotten  before  they  are  ripe. "  Bernardin, 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  Ill 

however,  by  his  treatment  of  landscape  as  "  the  back* 
ground  of  the  picture  of  a  human  life."  is  epoch- 
making  in  the  history  of  the  novel.  His  shallow 
sentiment  reflects  the  growing  weariness  with  wit  and 
social  artificiality,  and  was  for  a  time  immensely 
popular;  but  it  was  the  natural  result  of  Kousseau's 
teaching,  and  that  will  claim  attention  presently. 

Meantime  a  new  turn  had  been  given  to  fiction  by 
Voltaire,  —  here,  as  usual,  a  leader.  He  took  up  the 
conte  where  Perrault  and  his  followers  had  left  it,  and 
developed  from  it  the  tendenz  roman,  the  novel  with 
a  social  or  ethical  purpose.  His  short  tales  are  the 
most  artful  and  insinuating  controversial  pamphlets 
that  were  ever  penned.  Self-satisfied  optimism  in 
religion  and  popular  thought  were  never  so  pitilessly 
laid  bare,  so  wittily  mocked,  as  in  "  QandigLe  "  (1759) ; 
political  and  ecclesiastical  reforms  were  never  more 
effectually  preached  than  in  the  "  Homme  aux  qua- 
rante  e'cus  "  (1768),  with  its  amusing  persiflage  of  the 
"  single  tax ;  "  the  presumption  of  an  unspiritual  es- 
tablished church  might  laugh  at  direct  attacks,  but 
winced  at  the  scornful  masked  satire  of  "  Zadig  " 
(1747).  No  man  has  done  so  much  in  a  bad  cause 
with  so  slight  weapons  as  Voltaire,  by  the  indirect, 
gliding  irony  of  his  allusions  to  the  Scriptures.  "  I 
will  not  moralize  and  will  be  read,"  said  Byron;  but 
Voltaire  moralized  more  convincingly  than  any  of  his 
time,  and  was  more  universally  read  also.  It  is  true 
that  here,  as  elsewhere,  he  is  not  consistent.  Perhaps 
he  was  not  anxious  to  be.  "  T  frfmn  t.r>  r.n.rp>  more  for 
hjj^LDffls  in  1if°  than  for  q  t-"itibJL>Q  said.  Intellec- 
tually, he  might  be  a  pessimist  and  determinist ;  but 
he  knew  that  "  the  good  of  society  demands  that  man 
shall  think  himself  free, "  and  he  acted  and  preached 


112  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

accordingly,  — for  instance  in  "  Le  Mondain  "  (1736) 
and  "  L'Histoire  de  Jenni "  (1775).  In  this  he  is 
a  utilitarian  rather  than  a  philosopher.  He  knows 
that  the  mass  of  readers  will  not  see  his  inconsistency, 
while  they  will  feel  his  keen  thrusts  at  old  abuses  and 
creeds,  and  their  pride  will  be  flattered  by  the  frank 
cynicism  which  urges  them  to  combine  with  the  writer 
to  draw  advantage  from  the  superstitions  of  the  less 
enlightened.  Perhaps  no  "  moralist "  is  at  once  so 
clear  and  so  self -contradictory  as  Voltaire  in  these 
tales,  where  he  seems  now  deist,  now  atheist,  now 
radical,  now  reactionary,  now  pessimist,  now  optimist, 
so  that  the  work  as  a  whole  becomes  indeed  "  a  chaos 
of  luminous  ideas. " 

The  novel  with  a  purpose,  thus  launched,  found  a 
placid  cultivator  in  Marmontel  and  an  eager  advocate 
in  Diderot,  more  consistent  in  design  than  Voltaire, 
but  less  even  in  execution ;  rising  sometimes  to  a 
serious  and  eloquent  indignation,  as  in  "  La  Reli- 
gieuse, "  then  descending  into  the  pig-sty  of  "  Les 
Bijoux  indiscrets, "  or  loosing  the  bridle  of  a  Shandy- 
esque  fancy  in  "  Jacques  le  fataliste  "  and  the  "  Neveu 
de  Eameau, "  that  so  fascinated  the  attention  of  Goethe ; 
or  perhaps  revelling  in  the  free-lovers'  utopia  of  the 
"  Supplement  au  voyage  de  Bourgainville. "  Asa 
modern  critic,  Faguet  has  observed,  Diderot  was  a  type 
of  the  French  bourgeois,  and  very  far  from  "  the  most 
German  head  in  France, "  as  it  has  been  the  fashion  to 
call  him.1  He  had  the  same  facile  morality,  the  same 
lack  of  delicacy,  the  same  vulgar  inclinations  and 
generous  emotions,  the  same  sincerity  and  industry 
that  stamp  the  French  middle  class,  which  was  now 

1  The  expression  is  Sainte-Beuve's.  Goethe  had  said :  "  In  all  that 
the  French  blame  in  him,  he  is  a  genuine  German." 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  113 

4      '^ 

first  coming  to  the  front  as  representative  of  national 
life.  It  is  in  his  novels  that  Diderot  shows  most  of 
this  fundamentally  Gallic  mind.  While  his  philoso- 
phy was  a  prelude  to  the  theory  of  evolution,  in  his 
fiction  he  anticipated  Rousseau's  "  state  of  nature ; "  and 
his  cynicism  did  not  shrink  from  the  uttermost  conse- 
quences of  his  theory,  more  consistent  in  this  than  his 
sentimental  successor,  who  had  arrived  at  similar  con- 
clusions by  an  independent  and  less  logical  process. 
Yet  the  "  state  of  nature  "  is  associated  rather  with 
Rousseau  than  with  Diderot,  for  he  preached  it  with  a 
fire  of  sympathetic  enthusiasm  that  made  him  teacher 
and  guide  of  Europe  for  many  years  in  a  deeper  sense 
than  Voltaire  had  ever  been,  though  literary  criticism 
must  rank  him  as  the  inferior  genius. 

Jean-Jacques  Rousseau  (1712-1778)  was  the  son  of 
a  Genevan  clockmaker ;  yet  up  to  his  fortieth  year  he 
had  no  settled  home  or  occupation,  but  led  the  wan- 
dering life  of  a  sentimental  Gil  Bias,  the  shuttlecock 
of  his  usually  generous  emotions.  For  he  had  a  good 
heart,  ready  to  open  to  all,  but  as  ready  to  take  offence, 
and  quick  to  think  itself  deceived.  No  man  ever 
quarrelled  so  consistently  with  every  one  who  tried  to 
befriend  him,  —  with  Voltaire,  Diderot,  Hume,  the 
Prince  of  Conti,  and  the  various  lady  patronesses  of  his 
wanderings.  He  came  at  last  to  a  hatred,  not  of  the 
individual,  but  of  society,  which,  it  seemed  to  him, 
had  corrupted  the  individual,  and  made  him  unworthy 
of  the  loving  trust  Rousseau  longed  to  give.  It  is  not 
the  faults  of  human  nature  that  grieve  him,  but  the 
faults  of  social  order  against  which  his  sensitive  nature 
chafes.  It  is  in  literature,  as  in  society,  the  revolt  of 
individualism  against  the  classicism  of  Boileau  and 
the  principles  of  the  Bourbon  monarchy.  So  his  life 

8 


114  MODERN    FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

becomes  a  vision  of  what  might  be ;  a  Utopian  imagi- 
nation colors  all  his  philosophy.  It  addresses  itself, 
not  to  reason,  but  to  sentiment.  It  is  not  the  white 
light  of  ideas,  but  the  glow  of  passionate  tires.  Evi- 
dence is  neglected,  probability  scorned.  The  "  Social 
Contract "  assumes  an  origin  of  society  that  not  only 
never  was,  but,  a  priori,  never  could  be.  The  peda- 
gogy of  "  Emile, "  though  most  valuable  and  sugges- 
tive, is  just  as  impracticable  and  visionary.  The 
"  Nouvelle  He'loise  "  moves  in  a  cloud-land  of  emas- 
culate unreality;  while  the  cynical  frankness  of 
his  "  Confessions  "  shows  how  his  character  was  dis- 
integrated by  unresisted  imagination,  and  explains 
his  "  misanthropic  optimism  "  by  his  pathological 
condition. 

Dissatisfaction  with  the  order  of  society  was  almost 
universal  during  the  latter  half  of  the  century,  but,  ex- 
cept in  philosophic  circles,  it  was  inarticulate  and 
dimly  realized.  Kousseau  made  it  a  popular  passion,  a 
universal  enthusiasm.  But  the  destructive  influence 
of  "  Ine'galite'  "  (1755)  far  outweighed  the  constructive 
effort  of  the  "  Contrat  social "  (1762),  which  offered 
no  practical  remedy  and,  indeed,  stands  quite  isolated 
in  his  writings ;  for  it  borrowed  elements  from  Locke's 
second  Essay  on  Government  that  the  author  hardly 
assimilated  or  understood,  — elements  that  were  incon- 
sistent with  that  fundamental  dogma  of  the  "  state  of 
nature  "  which  runs  through  all  his  later  work,  inspir- 
ing his  "  Lettre  sur  les  spectacles  "  (1758)  with  the 
spirit  of  a  modern  Tertullian,  and  dictating  the  aris- 
tocratic pedagogy  of  "  Emile  "  (1762). 

Kousseau 's  theory  in  "  Emile  "  is  that  a  child 
should  be  left  to  develop  naturally.  He  allows  a  tutor, 
but  only  to  satisfy  legitimate  curiosity  and  arrange 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  115 

external  influence,  so  as  to  give  "  a  positive  indirect 
education. "  Even  the  ethics  of  property  are  to  be 
taught  by  object  lessons.  He  wishes  the  intellect  sub- 
ordinated to  the  sentimental  affections  and  emotions, 
but  he  wishes  the  child  to  be  isolated  from  other  chil- 
dren, from  adults,  even  from  his  family,  since  all  these 
have  some  of  the  inherited  virus  of  society.  Goethe 
called  "  Emile  "  the  "  natural  gospel  of  education ; " 
and  in  so  far  as  the  object  of  all  teaching  is  to  produce 
independent  thinking,  to  teach  children  and  not  facts, 
Eousseau  proclaimed  a  truth  always  in  danger  of  being 
forgotten.  He  was  the  reforming  iconoclast  in  this 
field  that  Voltaire  and  Diderot  were  in  others.  He 
went  too  far.  Taken  literally,  his  "  intuitive  educa- 
tion "  was  a  paradox ;  but  it  was  a  most  helpful  one, 
most  timely,  and  most  fruitful,  not  in  France  alone, 
but  for  all  Europe. 

In  the  letters  of  "  Julie,  la  nouvelle  He*loi'se  " 
(1761),  that  "  Midsummer  Night's  Dream  of  a  pri- 
vate tutor,"  that  often  suggests  Goethe's  "Elective 
Affinities,"  we  have  Eousseau 's  ideas  on  love,  and 
naturally,  therefore,  his  most  popular  work,  perhaps 
the  most  influential  novel  that  was  ever  written. 
Here  he  put  most  heart  and  passion,  and  most  of  his 
morbid  personal  experience.  To  be  sure,  Richardson 
was  his  obvious,  almost  his  declared  model.1  From 
him  he  took  the  epistolary  form,  the  bourgeois  char- 
acters, the  prolix  digressions,  and  it  was  from  the 
England  that  his  fancy  saw  behind  Richardson  that 
he  drew  Milord  Edouard,  the  philosophic  prig,  and 
those  astonishing  "  English  mornings, "  where  people 
gathered  together  in  gardens  that  art  had  aided  nature 

1  See  Texte,  Rousseau  et  les  origines  du  cosmopolitanisme  lit- 
teraire. 


116  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

to  turn  into  nurseries  of  sentimentality,  and  there  "  en- 
joyed at  once  the  bliss  of  being  united  and  the  charm 
of  meditation  "  in  "  an  immobility  of  ecstasy.  " 

But  what  made  the  "  Hdloi'se  "  a  power  was  its  feeling 
for  Nature  and  its  spirit  of  lyric  melancholy.  Here, 
too,  Eousseau  had  had  predecessors,  —  Thomson,  Gray, 
Collins,  Young,  and  the  other  sources  of  Ossian,  —  but 
these  "  common  people  of  the  skies  "  paled  before  a 
passion  where  recollections  of  Mademoiselle  de  Galley 
and  Mademoiselle  de  Graff enried  were  fanned  to  new 
flame  by  the  presence  of  Madame  d'Houdetot,  and  inter- 
penetrated with  memories  of  Madame  de  Warens,  till 
all  became  a  haunting  reality,  to  which  the  author 
sought  to  lend  a  central  purpose  and  dignity  by  a  de- 
fence of  the  home  and  of  Christianity  against  his  fan- 
cied enemies,  the  philosophies  and  libertins. 

It  is  true  that  the  situation  he  creates  is  hopelessly 
artificial.  These  connoisseurs  of  rare  sentiments  and 
mutual  students  of  their  own  pathological  psychology, 
these  romantic  self -tormentors,  are  so  false  to  Nature 
that  Eousseau  can  neither  procure  a  normal  climax  nor 
suffer  his  characters  to  get  on  without  one,  but  is  com- 
pelled to  summon  a  deus  ex  machina  to  cut  the  tangle 
in  which  their  perverse  sentimentality  had  involved 
these  paradoxical  people  in  their  "  enterprise  against 
common-sense. "  That  there  were  such  men  as  Saint- 
Preux  in  this  generation,  no  one  with  Werther  before 
his  eyes  will  deny ;  but  it  was  the  women  of  the  novel, 
Julie  and  Claire,  that  won  the  book  its  most  passionate 
admirers  and  its  immense  vogue  among  ladies,  who 
felt  that  their  duplex  feminine  nature,  neglected  by 
previous  novelists,  had  been  seized  as  never  before. , 
They  were  flattered  by  the  eminence  to  which  Kous- 
seau  had  advanced  them,  and  charmed  by  the  sym- 


THE   EIGHTEENTH   CENTURY.  117 

pathy  that  throbbed  through  his  pages.  They  knew 
the  reality  of  the  &cre  baiser  that  so  amused  Voltaire. 
Indeed,  Eousseau's  women  had  a  more  denned  individ- 
uality than  French  fiction  had  yet  seen.  In  general, 
the  book  was  genuine  and  sincere.  It  came  from  a 
romantic  heart,  and  spoke  to  thousands  of  romantic 
hearts,  who  also  had  in  rich  measure  the  "  gift  of  tears, " 
in  which  Julie  so  readily  dissolved.  It  roused  in 
them  that  "  general  warmth "  of  which  Jean  Paul 
speaks,  —  that  vague,  all-embracing,  ill-defined,  sen- 
timental philanthropy,  which  was  a  cause,  and,  still 
more,  a  directing  force  in  the  French  Eevolution. 

"  Emile  "  and  "  Julie  "  show  sentimentality  applied. 
The  "  Confessions  "  exhibit  it  as  raw  material.  Here 
one  is  less  repelled  by  the  dogmatic  undercurrent, 
and  so  can  enjoy  more  fully  the  artistic  charm  of  the 
apparently  frank  and  simple  narrative  of  his  frailty 
and  his  vices,  where  attention  is  suspended  with  great 
art,  events  skilfully  prepared,  and  each  climax  most 
carefully  managed.  These  "  Confessions  "  are  probably 
most  read  to-day  ;  but  in  the  influence  they  exerted  they 
must  yield  both  to  the  novels  and  to  "  The  Savoyard 
Vicar,"  a  little  tractate  contained  in  "  Emile,"  whose 
emotional,  undogmatic,  yet  fervent  faith  is  the  first 
effectual  stemming  of  the  infidel  current,  and  the 
herald  of  the  equally  emotional  Christianity  of  Saint- 
Pierre,  Chateaubriand,  and  Lamartine,  as  Eousseau's 
feeling  for  Nature  was  for  that  which  was  most  original 
in  their  art. 

For  in  all  Eousseau's  works  there  is  a  love  of 
[Nature,  a  sense  of  and  appreciation  for  natural  beauty, 
|  that  was  a  revelation  in  French  literature.  Not  only 
\  is  there  nothing  before  Eousseau  equal  to  the  sunrise 
'  in  the  third  book  of  "  Emile, "  or  to  his  description 


118  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

of  the  pervenche,  but  there  is  nothing  to  which  it  can 
be  compared.  He  gave  his  countrymen  a  new  sense. 
This  was  much ;  but  far  more  important  was  Kousseau's 
assertion  of  the  long-suppressed  rights  of  individual- 
/ism,  of  the  ego  in  literature.  As  a  describer  of  senti- 
ments and  feelings,  he  surpassed  Provost,  as  Provost 
I  had  surpassed  Marivaux.  Now,  this  is  just  the  line  of 
demarcation  that  separates  the  classical  literature  from 
the  romantic.  Sentimental  religion  and  sentimental 
politics  may  be  discredited  by  the  logic  of  events,  the 
recent  literary  movement  may  show  in  its  naturalism 
more  of  the  spirit  of  Diderot;  but  individualism,  de- 
scriptions of  sentiment  and  nature,  and  the  mutual 
play  of  one  on  the  other,  are  still  the  key-note  of 
modern  literature.  That  Eousseau  struck  that  note, 
that  he  "  emancipated  the  ego, "  gives  him  a  unique 
place,  and  makes  his  name  the  most  fitting  introduc- 
tion to  the  literature  of  the  nineteenth  century. 


MADAME   DE    STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.        119 


CHAPTEE  IV. 

MADAME   DE   STAEL  AND   CHATEAUBRIAND. 

THE  early  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  were  unfa- 
vorable to  the  literary  development  of  France.  The 
Napoleonic  era  did  indeed  nurse  the  childhood  of 
many  whose  illustrious  genius  bears  witness  to  the 
emotions  that  attended  their  birth,  but  these  emotions 
found  no  immediate  and  worthy  echo.  Napoleon 
might  desire  to  add  this  to  his  other  laurels ;  but  the 
compeller  of  states  could  not  command  the  flight  of 
genius,  and  the  lassitude  of  reaction  from  the  unbridled 
liberties  of  the  Kevolution  invited  a  tyranny  that  soon 
spread  from  the  political  to  the  social  and  literary 
sphere.  Yet,  during  the  twenty  years  that  separate 
Lodi  from  Waterloo,  two  writers  were  in  their  prime 
whose  work  contains  the  germ  of  nearly  every  later 
phase  of  literary  development  in  the  last  century. 
Madame  de  Stae'l  and  Chateaubriand  are  the  true 
antetypes  of  the  Romanticists,  the  Psychologists,  and 
the  Eealists,  and  of  the  subjective  and  objective 
schools  of  criticism.  And  they  are  to  such  an  extent 
the  sufficient  complements  and  supplements  of  one 
another,  that  their  contemporaries  for  the  first  twenty 
years  of  the  century  need  hardly  be  named  in  a 
study  of  the  literary  currents  of  the  eighty  years  that 
follow. 

Madame  de  StaeTs  influence  on  literature  cannot  be 
measured  by  the  popularity  of  her  books.     It  is  long 


120  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

since  any  of  her  writings  have  been  widely  read,  and 
they  are  never  likely  to  be  so.  Yet  there  has  been  no 
generation  since  her  time  that  has  not  felt  and  ac- 
knowledged the  power  of  her  fruitful  thought,  not  in 
politics  alone,  but  in  literature  also. 

Her  personality  need  not  long  detain  us.  She  was 
the  daughter  of  Suzanne  Curchod,  Gibbon's  youthful 
flame,  and  of  the  Genevese  banker,  Necker,  the  noted 
finance  minister  of  Louis  XVI.1  Thus  it  happened 
that  she  passed  her  precocious  youth  in  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  literary  salons  of  Paris,  where  her  lively 
intellect  was  stimulated,  perhaps  as  much  as  her 
vanity,  by  constant  intercourse  with  some  of  the 
keenest  wits  and  critics  of  that  time.  Hither  came 
Grimm,  author  of  the  "  Correspondence  with  Foreign 
Courts ; "  here  might  be  seen  Eaynal,  of  the  philo- 
sophic and  demagogic  "  History  of  the  Indies ;  "  here, 
too,  the  distinguished  metaphysicians  Thomas  and 
Marmontel.  And  here  the  future  Madame  de  Stael 
used  to  sit  at  her  mother's  feet,  and  absorb  the 
substance  of  the  debates  and  discussions  around  her, 
storing  up  silently,  like  a  busy  bee,  material  for  the 
inexhaustible  conversations  and  stinging  criticisms  of 
a  lifetime,  while  she  nursed  ambitions  of  a  future  in- 
tellectual domination  over  a  social  circle  as  brilliant  as 
that  which  the  genius  of  her  parents  had  gathered. 

Perhaps  no  girl  of  fifteen  ever  lived  in  the  midst  of 

1  She  was  born  in  1765,  and  died  in  1817.  Principal  works :  De  la 
litte'rature,  1800;  Delphine,  1802;  Corinne,  1807;  De  1'Allemagne, 
1 813 ;  Revolution  franchise,  1818 ;  Dix  anne'es  dVxil,  1821.  Biography : 
Blennerhasset,  Life  of  Madame  de  Stael;  Sorel,  Madame  de  Stael 
(Grands  ecrivains  fran<?ais).  Critical  essays :  Bruuetiere,  Evolution  de 
la  critique  (Lecon  VI.);  Faguet,  Politiques  et  moralistes,  i.  123;  Pel- 
lissier,  Mouvemeut  litte'raire  au  xix.  siecle,  p.  42  sqq.  (cited  hereafter  as 
"Pellissier"). 


MADAME   DE   STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.        121 

such  a  vortex  of  disintegrating  ideas,  and  held  the 
little  skiff  of  her  genius  steady  in  the  tide.  In  any 
case,  Madame  de  Stael  became  so  permeated  with  the 
ruling  ideas  of  her  time  that  she  took  into  herself,  arid 
assimilated  more  perfectly,  perhaps,  than  any  other 
one  person,  the  intellectual  spirit  of  that  age ;  and  to 
the  close  of  her  life  it  is  this,  the  last  generation  of 
the  eighteenth  century,  that  she  represents,  with  its 
philosophy  of  progressive  confident  optimism  and  its 
belief  in  ideas  and  ideals.  But  Mademoiselle  Necker's 
intellectual  emancipation  did  not  hinder  her  from  a 
marriage  (January,  1786),  dictated  far  more  by  con-, 
venience  than  love,  with  the  Swedish  ambassador, 
Baron  von  Stael-Holstein.  Perhaps  it  was  felt  that 
she  was  not  likely  to  make  a  love-match.  Boisterous 
and  vain  in  her  girlhood,  plain  to  the  verge  of  home- 
liness from  infancy  to  death,  she  was  so  fond  of  talk- 
ing that  a  lover  might  have  found  it  hard  to  declare 
his  passion. l  Even  before  her  marriage,  she  had  grown 
to  be  positive  and  self-assertive,  and  had  written 
much,  though  she  had  published  nothing.  So,  though 
she  had  three  children,  she  kept  the  tenor  of  her  inde- 
pendent way,  and  at  length  (1799)  consented  to  such 
separation  as  the  law  then  admitted.  Neither  husband 
nor  wife  cared  at  all  for  each  other,  and  neither  cared 

1  Sorel  gives  us  this  word-picture :  "  Expressive  features,  a  com- 
plexion dark  rather  than  fresh,  yet  colored  and  growing  animate  in 
conversation,  sculpturesque  shoulders,  powerful  arms,  robust  hands,  as 
of  a  sovereign  rather  than  of  a  great  sentimental  coquette,  a  high 
forehead,  black  hair  falling  in  thick  curls,  vigorous  nose,  strongly 
marked  mouth,  prominent  lips  opened  wide  to  life  and  speech,  an  ora- 
tor's mouth  with  a  frank,  good-humored  smile.  All  the  genius  shining 
in  her  eyes,  in  her  sparkling  glances,  confident,  proud,  deep,  and  gentle 
in  repose,  imperious  when  a  flash  crosses  them.  But  that  that  flash 
may  shine,  she  needs  the  tripod  and  inspiration,  —  she  must  speak  to 
seduce  and  conquer,  to  make  herself  beloved  "  (pp.  18-19). 


122  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

that  the  other  did  not  care.  Though  the  Baron  did 
not  die  till  1802,  he  played  no  part  in  her  intellectual 
life. 

The  literary  career  of  Madame  de  Stael  begins  with 
"  Lettres  sur  J.-J.  Eousseau  "  (1788),  for  whose  social 
ideas  she  had  then  an  ardent  admiration,  thouglTshe 
was  too  persistently  optimistic  wholly  to  compre- 
hend them.  Other  literary  inspiration  had  come 
to  her  girlhood  from  "  Clarissa  Harlowe  "  and  from 
"  Werther. "  Hence  she  sympathized  with  the  Kevo- 
lution  till  the  imprisonment  of  the  king  produced  a 
revulsion  to  an  equally  indiscreet  "  incivism. "  So 
she  came  to  abuse  her  ambassadorial  right  of  asylum ; 
and  fear  of  the  consequences  of  this  rashness  led  her 
to  leave  Paris  shortly  before  the  September  massacres 
(1792),  though  it  is  not  clear  that  she  was  in  danger 
.from  anything  but  her  overheated  imagination. 

She  went  to  Coppet,  near  Geneva,  and  gathered  there 
a  coterie  of  friends  and  political  sympathizers.  Still, 
she  did  not  attract  the  attention  she  thought  her  due ; 
so  in  the  next  year  she  turned  to  England,  and  tried 
to  make  herself  the  centre  of  a  more  important  group, 
though  not  without  some  personal  scandal.  But  Paris 
always  fascinated  her;  and  when  the  fall  of  Eobe- 
spierre,(1794)  permitted,  she  returned,  and  for  nine 
years,  interrupted  only  by  brief  visits  to  Coppet,  she 
played  a  political  part,  though  not  so  great  a  one  as 
she  imagined.  Instinct  led  her  to  oppose  Napoleon, 
and  her  vanity  was  soothed  at  the  thought  that  she 
could  irritate  one  who  had  sneered  at  her  genius. 
Her  separation  had  deprived  her  of  diplomatic  protec- 
tion in  1799 ;  but  she  continued  to  tease  the  Corsican 
with  biting  words,  knowing  that  he  could  only  exile 
her,  and  that  nothing  could  give  her  so  excellent  a 


MADAME   DE    STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.       123 

vantage-ground    from    which   to   shoot    her  poisoned 
shafts  of  wit  and  nurse  the  pride  of  martyrdom. 

In  1803  the  expected  order  from  the  consular  police 
banished  her  from  Paris,  and  naturally  directed  her 
attention  to  Germany,  which,  as  Eichter  had  said, 
then  "  ruled  the  kingdom  of  the  air, "  the  land  of 
ideas ;  and  so,  unwearied  in  her  search  for  noted  people 
to  talk  to,  she  came  that  winter  to  Weimar,  where  her 
fame  as  a  conversationalist  had  preceded  her.  Goethe 
opportunely  discovered  that  his  health  did  not  permit 
him  to  see  strangers.  He  put  her  off  on  Schiller,  a 
good  deal  to  the  latter's  disgust;  for  though  he  found 
her  witty  and  keen,  she  seemed  to  him  to  have  little 
ideality  or  poetry  and  no  feminine  reserve.  Her  flow 
of  words  overwhelmed  him,  and  when  she  left  Weimar, 
"  he  felt, "  so  he  wrote  to  Goethe,  "  as  though  he  had 
recovered  from  a  severe  illness. "  However,  she  pro- 
duced a  quite  different  impression  on  that  rather  eccen- 
tric prophet  of  German  Eomanticism,  Wilhelm 
Schlegel,  who  became  first  a  kind  of  literary  impre- 
sario for  her  conversazione,  then  a  private  tutor  and 
secretary,  and  an  almost  constant  member  of  her 
household  till  her  death.  It  is  important  to  bear  this 
in  mind,  for  a  large  part  of  her  mission  was  to  intro- 
duce German  ideas  to  France;  and  it  was  through 
Schlegel's  eyes,  critical  indeed,  but  far  from  impar- 
tial, that  she  saw  both  the  land  and  its  literature  and 
philosophy.  Her  book  on  Germany  has  suffered  in 
consequence,  as  will  appear  presently. 

Before  Madame  de  Stael's  ambition  had  been 
crowned  by  exile,  she  had  written  an  essay  of  minor 
value  on  "  The  Influence  of  the  Passions  "  (1796),  and 
a  more  ambitious  treatise  on  "  Literature  in  its  Con- 
nection with  Social  Institutions  "  (1800),  that  shows 


124  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

the  marks  of  her  close  association  with  the  politi- 
cal philosopher  Constant,  best  known  for  his  novel 
"  Adolphe, "  a  forerunner  of  the  modern  psychologi- 
cal fiction.  But  her  real  power  was  first  seen  in 
"  Delphine  "  (1802),  a  half -autobiographical  story, 
that  naturally  deals  with  the  unsounded  mysteries 
of  the  misunderstood  woman,  the  femm,&  in^om^ise. 
But "  Delphine  "  is  hardly  read  now,  and  would  be  read 
still  less,  were  it  not  for  her  second  novel  "  Corinne  " 
(1807),  a  story  for  which  the  travels  that  followed  her 
exile  furnished  rich  material.  Here  first  in  France  the 
novel  was  made  a  vehicle  for  artistic  discussion,  as  she 
found  it  already  employed  in  Germany  by  Goethe  and 
Eichter. 

In  1808  she  broke  finally  with  Constant,  with  whom 
association  had  brought  her  neither  credit  nor  satisfac- 
tion; and  during  the  years  1809  and  1810,  with  in- 
creasing religious  seriousness,  she  refreshed  her  memo- 
ries of  Germany  by  extended  travels  there,  and  used 
the  materials  that  she  gathered  then  and  before  in  her 
most  important  book,  "  De  1'Allemagne. "  This  she 
saw  fit  to  publish  in  Paris,  and,  for  fear  that  she  might 
be  allowed  to  do  so  uncensured,  she  took  the  occasion 
to  write  an  exasperating  letter  to  Napoleon,  who  was 
stung  into  confiscating  the  whole  printed  edition  of  a 
book  his  own  censors  had  endorsed.  The  loss  fell  on 
her  publisher,  and,  having  secured  the  advertisement 
of  this  inexpensive  martyrdom,  and  made  Napoleon  a 
little  ridiculous  by  a  second  and  more  stringent  decree 
of  exile,  she  consoled  herself  at  Coppet  with  a  Swiss 
officer,  Eocca,  whom  she  secretly  married  in  1811,  she 
being  then  forty-five  years  old  and  he  twenty-two. 
Then  she  travelled  for  two  years  in  Eussia,  Sweden, 
and  England,  where  at  length  her  "  Germany  "  ap- 


MADAME   DE   STAEL   AND    CHATEAUBRIAND.        125 

peared  in  1813.  Napoleon's  fall  now  opened  France 
to  her  again ;  but  she  remained  much  abroad,  for  her 
health  was  gradually  failing,  and  her  last  book,  the 
"  Considerations  on  the  French  Eevolution, "  was  not 
what  she  would  have  made  it  ten  years  before.  She 
died  July  14,  1817. 

The  impression  that  Madame  de  StaeTs  personality 
made  on  her  contemporaries  was  not  attractive. 
Coquetry  is  pardoned  only  to  beauty  and  youth.  She 
was  never  beautiful,  and  she  had  long  ceased  to  be 
young,  while  she  still  continued  to  urge  her  presence 
and  her  conversation  on  men  of  genius,  who,  like 
Schiller,  found  it  more  exhausting  than  admirable. 
Then,  when  well  past  forty,  she  made  herself  ridicu- 
lously happy  by  an  absurd  marriage.  She  was  not  per- 
sonally liked,  even  by  those  who  appreciated  her 
talents;  nor  was  she  a  great  writer,  if  one  considers 
only  her  language  and  style.  It  is  not  for  either  of* 
these  that  she  takes  the  large  place  that  literary  tradi- 
tion accords  her ;  it  is  the  contents  of  her  work  that 
has  lasting  influence  and  value,  though  in  important 
particulars  even  this  was  not  original  with  her.  In- 
deed, one  of  the  most  striking  things  about  her  is  her 
inquisitive  receptivity.  She  was  always  on  the  alert 
to  learn  from  everybody,  at  the  risk,  or  even  with  the 
certainty,  of  boring  them.  But  this  made  her  books  a 
remarkable  reflection  of  the  world  of  thought  in  which 
she  moved. 

The  daughter  of  Necker  could  hardly  fail  to  be  in- 
spired with  an  indestructible  faith  in  human  reason, 
liberty,  and  justice.  Madame  de  Stae'l  abandoned 
herself  with  her  whole  soul  to  the  militant  optimism 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  She  conceived  herself  a 
prophetess  of  the  religion  of  humanity ;  she  believed 


126  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

thoroughly  in  human  perfectibility,  and  thought  |  the 
hope  of  the  future  progress  of  our  species  the  most- 
religious  hope  on  earth.  "  Virtue  and  happiness  were 
her  twin  enthusiasms,  but  whicIT'rield  the  key  to  the 
other  she  never  clearly  saw.  Her  genius  would  have 
placed,  with  her  father,  happiness  in  virtue ;  her  ima- 
gination, with  Eousseau,  placed  virtue  in  happiness.1 
Her  first  considerable  book,  the  "  Literature, "  showed 
"  a  European  spirit  in  a  French  mind. "  It  was  an 
act  of  faith  in  the  destinies  of  the  nineteenth  century 
based  on  the  out-worn  philosophy  of  the  eighteenth. 
Even  the  reign  of  terror  could  not  shake  her  placid 
confidence  that  all  was  for  the  best  in  the  best  of 
worlds.  "  How  reason  and  philosophy  constantly 
acquire  new  force  through  the  numberless  misfortunes 
of  mankind, "  is  her  reflection,  consoling  or  exasper- 
ating as  these  misfortunes  of  mankind  happen  to  be 
*ours  or  our  neighbors'.  With  happy  foresight  she 
applied  this  thought  to  literature,  into  which  she  saw 
that  the  democratic  spirit  would  bring  a  more  ener- 
getic beauty,  a  more  moving  and  more  philosophic 
picture  of  the  events  of  life.  Thus  she  felt  it  would 
"  enlarge  the  bounds  of  art ;  "  and  if  that  rendered  the 
drama  of  Racine  impossible,  she,  at  least,  shed  no 
tears  at  the  thought. 

In  this  way  Madame  de  Stael  helped  to  liberate 
French  literature  from  itself  and  from  the  self-imposed 
fetters  of  absolute  critical  canons.  But  she  was  also 
first  to  widen  her  literary  ideas  by  contrasting  and  com- 
paring them  with  those  of  contemporary  Germany  and 
England,  till  then  much  neglected,  especially  the 
German,  by  those  who  proclaimed  their  natural  pre- 
scriptive right  to  enlighten  the  world.  Her  friend- 
1  See  Sorel,  op.  cit.  p.  17. 


MADAME   DE    STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.        127 

ships  were  studiously  cosmopolitan.  "  From  now  on, " 
she  said,  "  we  must  have  a  European^s^irit. "  She 
was  first  to  practise  what  she  preached,  and  she  had 
before  her  a  people  sorely  in  need  of  the  lesson,  though 
prepared  for  it  also,  as  never  before,  by  the  attrition 
of  the  Napoleonic  wars.  No  one  has  described  her 
purpose  better  than  herself.  "  The  sterility  with 
which  our  literature  is  menaced, "  she  says,  "  suggests 
that  the  French  spirit  needs  to  be  regenerated  by  some 
more  vigorous  sap ; "  and  this  she  would  bring  to 
her  country  from  -beyond  the  Khine.  For  while  the 
French  literature,  as  well  as  the  Italian  and  Spanish, 
from  which,  till  then,  it  had  chiefly  drawn,  were  in 
the  main  and  in  their  spirit  artistic  and  rationalistic, 
often  even  plastic  in  form  and  hedonistic  in  charac- 
ter, the  Teutonic  literatures,  being  less  dominated 
by  classical  traditions,  were  more  idealistic  and  indi- 
vidually subjective.  Hence  English  and  German  — 
Ossian,  Byron,  Goethe,  Kichter,  and  the  Schlegels  — 
aided  powerfully  in  the  reawakening  of  egoism  that 
had  been  begun  by  Kousseau.  That  reawakening  had 
been  the  aim  of  the  "  Literature, "  and  was  the  result 
of  the  "  Germany.  "  The  French  Eomantic  movement, 
one  of  the  great  literary  regenerations  in  history,  is  in 
large  measure  the  work  of  Madame  de  Stael. 

But  this  very  success  is  the  cause  of  the  neglect 
into  which  her  works  have  fallen.  She  occupied  her- 
self much  with  the  thought,  with  the  ethical  content 
of  what  she  wrote,  little  with  its  form.  But  the 
thoughts  that  were  new  or  revolutionary  when  she 
uttered  them,  became  commonplaces  the  more  quickly 
because  they  found  general  acceptance.  Thus  her 
work  appealed  to  after  generations  neither  by  novelty 
nor  by  beauty ;  and  so  it  has  found  ever  fewer  readers, 


128  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

though  it  surpassed  in  breadth  and  fulness  that  of  any 
contemporary  author.  She  is  still  the  only  female 
writer  of  France  whose  talent  is  truly  masculine. 
Almost  every  literary  movement  of  the  century  can 
be  traced  back  to  her  initiative.  "  She  sowed  the  cen- 
tury with  fertile  ideas ;  she  gave  French  poetry,  as  it 
were,  a  new  soul.  "  l 

The  books  by  which  she  did  this  are  pre-eminently 
"  Corinne  "  and  "  De  I'Allernagne.  "  The  former  shows 
the  creative  artist  at  the  height  of  her  development. 
It  is  "  the  imaginative  work  of  a  very  sensitive  woman, 
shrewd,  a  good  moralist,  and  very  deft  in  the  manage- 
ment of  intrigue.  But  her  imagination  deals  only 
with  ideas.  She  has  an  inventive,  not  a  creative 
genius ;  she  knows  how  to  paint  only  herself.  Take 
away  Corinne,  and  there  is  not  a  living  character  in 
the  story ;  "  2  and  the  most  prominent  are  the  most 
unreal.  Her  lovers  are  absolutely  conventional ;  not 
studies  of  life,  but  visions  from  the  dreamland  of  her 
fancy.  Nor  was  this  thought  a  fault  by  readers  only 
a  generation  removed  from  the  "  Sorrows  of  Werther, " 
who  were  still  breathing  the  idealist  atmosphere  of 
the  eighteenth  century.  This  will  explain  why 
"Corinne,"  like  Goethe's  greater  novel,  should  have 
a  tragic  catastrophe.  The  actual  world  will  always 
present  this  aspect  to  the  idealist,  who,  like  Madame 
d'e  Stael,  spends  his  life  in  the  chase  of  the  butterfly, 
happiness,  and  has  always  an  instinctive  feeling  that 
intellectual  superiority  is  rather  a  hardship  than  a 
boon,  or,  in  her  own  words,  that  "  glory  is  only  the 
bright  shroud  of  happiness. " 

1  Pellissier,  Mouvement  Htteraire.     See  also  Brunetiere,  Evolution 
de  la  critique. 

2  Faguet,  Politiques  et  raoralistes. 


MADAME   DE   STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.        129 

In  "  Corinne, "  as  in  "  Delphine, "  the  plot  is  easy, 
graceful,  well -man  aged,  but  not  strong,  nor  of  any 
great  psychological  value.  Her  actors  are  less  studies 
from  life  than  characters  in  La  Bruyere's  style ;  and 
even  so,  they  are  rather  typical  phases  of  the  author's 
own  character.  Her  personality  is  ever  present  and 
overshadowing  to  the  reader,  as  it  probably  was  to  the 
writer.  But,  as  has  been  said,  this  was  a  personality 
with  which  it  is  difficult  to  feel  much  sympathy,  and 
difficult  not  to  feel  some  impatience.  The  chief  value 
of  "  Corinne, "  then,  is  not  psychologic,  but  ethical  and 
aesthetic.  Rousseau  had  preached  the  purifying  influ- 
ence of  a  return  to  Nature.  Chateaubriand  was  even 
then  urging,  with  all  the  power  of  his  splendid 
eloquence,  a  return  to  the  ages  of  faith  and  the  sympa- 
thetic study  of  mediaeval  Christianity.  Essential  as 
a  balance  and  complement  to  their  teaching  was 
Madame  de  Stael's  education  of  the  aesthetic  sense, 
by  which  a  new  range  of  emotions  gained  recognition 
in  the  ethical  evolution  of  literature.  "  For  a  whole 
generous,  romantic,  and  passionate  generation  '  Co- 
rinne '  was  the  book  of  love  and  of  the  ideal. "  It  is 
in  this  novel  that  the  artistic  and  musical  fiction  of 
the  next  period  had  its  immediate  origin.  Without 
"  Corinne  "  there  would  have  been  no  "  Teverino  "  and 
no  "  Consuelo. " 

"  Germany  "  followed  up  and  developed  the  ideas  of 
the  "  Literature  "  as  "  Corinne  "  had  done  those  of 
"  Delphine. "  But  it  had  a  far  deeper  effect  and  wider 
influence.  For  with  all  her  unswerving  sympathy  with 
the  eighteenth  century,  there  was  a  side  of  Madame 
de  Stael's  mind  that  was  first  developed  by  contact 
with  German  thought,  a  side  that  otherwise  might 
never  have  been  developed  at  all.  The  ideas  thus 


130  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

evoked  were  so  new  to  France  that  their  promulgate! 
received  greater  credit  for  originality  than  was  her  due. 
But  whether  her  ideas  were  original  or  not  is  a  matter 
of  far  less  importance  than  that  through  her  German 
Romanticism  and  subjectivity  found  a  more  rapid  and 
less  distorted  acceptance  in  France  than  would  other- 
wise have  been  possible;  and  thus  Madame  de  Stael 
not  only  influenced  the  development  of  French  polit- 
ical and  philosophic  speculation,  but  she  gave  "the 
key  of  the  fields  "  to  the  lyric  muse  of  France  that  had 
pined  for  lack  of  liberty  since  Malherbe  had  "  brought 
her  to  the  rules  of  duty ; "  she  was  the  emancipator  of 
the  Romantic  School. 

"  De  1'Allemagne  "  is  a  book  of  criticism,  but  it  is 
not  a  critical  book.  With  one  eye  on  Germany,  she 
has  the  other  fixed  on  France,  always  intent  on  the 
moral  of  her  fable,  best  pleased  if  it  can  be  barbed 
with  a  sting  for  the  Corsican  and  his  policy.  So  the 
comparison  of  this  book  to  Tacitus'  "  Germania "  is 
trite  and  obvious.  But  the  likeness  hardly  extends  be- 
yond the  purpose  and  the  title.  She  had  seen  much  of 
Germany ;  but  Schlegel  was  always  at  her  elbow,  and 
the  daughter  of  the  Swiss  Protestant  had  found  herself 
more  drawn  to  the  hazy  idealism  of  the  German  meta- 
physicians than  to  the  truer  spirit  of  the  School  of 
Weimar.  It  is  not  of  Germany  nor  of  the  Germans 
that  this  book  treats  primarily  or  chiefly,  and  in  the 
part  nominally  devoted  to  that  country  and  its  people 
there  is  least  observation  and  most  error.  Philosophy 
and  art  absorb  almost  her  entire  interest.  Her  naive 
idealism  found  in  the  nebulous  metaphysics  of  Kant 
and  Fichte  an  antidote  for  the  cold,  dry,  and  not  very 
penetrating  light  of  the  French  Encyclopaedists.  Her 
generous  enthusiasm  had  been  repelled  by  D'Holbach 


MADAME   DE   STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.        131 

and  Diderot.  It  was  drawn  easily,  or  rather  it  cast 
itself  with  delight,  into  the  vortex  of  Kant  and  Jacobi, 
into  a  deep  but  adventurous  and  audacious  idealism 
that  was  prone  to  see  things  through  ideas  and  to  dis- 
solve facts  into  thoughts.  In  this  philosophy  she  saw 
her  very  self,  her  own  sentiments  and  instincts,  but 
conceived  and  expressed  in  a  way  that  transcended  her 
power  to  originate,  or  indeed  wholly  to  comprehend 
and  transmit.  Then,  too,  as  Heine  has  shown,  this 
system  was  the  natural  result  of  the  Protestant  posi- 
tion, so  that  on  this  side  also  it  appealed  to  Madame 
de  Stael,  who  evolved  from  it  a  sort  of  liberal  Chris- 
tianity, vague  and  ill-defined,  and  as  far  removed  from 
the  national  Christianity  of  France  as  German  meta- 
physics from  French  philosophy.  Thus  she  contrib- 
uted to  widen  and  liberalize,  though  hardly  to 
strengthen  and  deepen,  the  philosophic  and  religious 
thought  of  the  next  generation  in  France. 

But  in  1804  Madame  de  Stael  found  in  Germany  a 
literature  as  sharply  contrasted  as  its  philosophy  to 
that  of  France.  Emancipated  by  Lessing  and  the 
vagaries  of  the  "  Storm  and  Stress"  from  foreign  influ- 
ences, and  bonds,  it  was  in  the  full  bloom  of  its  second 
classical  period,  while  it  was  already  clear  that  French 
classicism,  rejected  abroad,  was  moribund  at  home. 
Not  only  did  the  Germans  allow  themselves  a  more 
unrestrained  subjectivity  and  a  greater  freedom  both 
in  matter  and  form,  but  there  were  among  them  two  or 
three  men  of  greater  poetic  genius  than  any  France 
had  seen  since  Moliere's  day.  Naturally  these  liber- 
ties impressed  her ;  she  was  no  longer  sure  that  the 
eighteenth  century  in  France  marked  a  literary  advance 
on  the  seventeenth.  Her  theory  of  the  drama,  once 
narrowly  French,  now  became  broadly  Aristotelian; 


132  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

and  even  the  Encyclopaedist  philosophy  seemed  now 
to  her  to  have  been  clouded  by  combat,  while  the  soli- 
taries of  the  seventeenth  century  had  had  "  a  more  pro- 
found insight  into  the  depths  of  the  human  heart. " 

What,  then,  was  her  conclusion,  her  advice  to  French 
authors  ?  She  would  have  them  imitate  neither  their 
own  classics  nor  the  new  German  stars,  for  she  per- 
ceived, and  was  one  of  the  first  to  grasp,  the  truth,  that 
literature,  to  gain  a  hold  on  any  people,  must  speak 
in  the  spirit,  temper,  and  language  of  the  time,  not  in 
a  pseudo-classical  jargon.  "  The  literature  of  the 
ancients  is  among  the  moderns  a  transplanted  litera- 
ture.  The  romantic,  chivalrous  literature  is  indigenous 
among  us ;  it  is  our  religion,  our  institutions,  that  have 
made  it  blossom. "  She  saw  clearly,  what  Perrault 
and  his  fellows  had  felt  dimly  a  century  before,  — that 
modern  literature  would  draw  from  modern  conditions 
a  more  natural  nourishment  for  a  healthier  life. 

The  fundamental  idea  was  true,  and  the  time  was 
opportune  for  its  proclamation ;  but  the  example  was 
not  an  adequate  illustration  of  it.  Neither  in  Ger- 
many nor  in  France  was  there  a  long  and,  above  all, 
not  a  healthy  life  in  store  for  the  Eomantic  revival 
that  dazzled  her.  She  did  not  see  that  emancipation 
from  rules  could  not  emancipate  from  the  fundamental 
laws  of  taste,  and  that  German  Eomanticism  was  as 
factitious  an  imitation  as  pseudo-classicism  had  been. 
The  true  glory  of  German  literature  lay,  not  in  the 
Schlegels,  Eichter,  and  Novalis,  but  in  Lessing,  Schil- 
ler, and  Goethe ;  while  German  philosophy  was  weak 
from  the  very  fact  that  it  was  not  an  expression  of  the 
true  national  spirit,  but,  as  Goethe  saw  and  said,  "  a 
parasite  sapping  the  strength  of  the  people. " 

"  De  1'Allemagne  "  is  divided  into  four  parts.     Her 


MADAME   DE    STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.        133 

chapters  on  the  country,  the  people  and  their  ways, 
are  neither  very  profound  nor  very  accurate ;  yet  they 
show  an  attentive  observation  and  a  ready,  receptive 
mind,  quick  to  see  what  she  desired  and  expected  to 
see.  She  gives  special  chapters  to  Berlin  and  Vienna, 
and  notes  the  deep  racial  lines  that  separate  Prussians, 
Saxons,  Bavarians,  and  Austrians.  Indeed,  she  seems 
here  less  a  traveller  than  a  student  of  comparative 
sociology,  and  finds  herself  much  more  at  ease  when 
she  can  turn  from  provinces  and  cities  to  books  and 
ideas,  to  "  Literature  and  the  Arts, "  where  indeed  lit- 
erature occupies  two  hundred  and  eighty-three  pages 
and  the  arts  eleven.  This  is  the  most  valuable  and 
fruitful  part  of  the  book.  Partial  and  warped  as  the 
judgments  often  are,  they  revealed  to  France,  and  in 
some  measure  to  England  also,  an  unsuspected  mine  of 
wealth,  from  which  foreign  nations  had  drawn  little 
up  to  that  time,  and  have  never  since  ceased  to  draw 
in  increasing  measure.  It  matters  little  that  the 
modern  reader  discovers  some  egregious  monuments  of 
false  perspective,  little  that  she  could  not  discern 
in  Lessing  "  a  dramatic  author  of  the  first  rank, " 
gave  to  him  less  space  than  to  Werner,  and  to  the 
Schlegels  twice  as  much  as  to  Herder.  It  matters 
little,  either,  that  the  watery  Klopstock  is  her  favorite 
German  poet;  that  her  criticism  of  the  works  of 
Schiller  and  Goethe  accords  ill  with  our  later  aesthet- 
ics ;  that  she  thinks  "  Don  Carlos  "  as  important  as 
"  Wallenstein, "  and  "  Egmont  "  the  finest  of  Goethe's 
tragedies.  What  does  matter  is  that  she  had  a  gen- 
erous appreciation  for  this  foreign  literature,  and 
inspired  it  in  others,  who  afterward  corrected  her 
judgments.  But  though  its  shortcomings  are  obvious, 
it  might  be  hard  to  find,  even  to-day,  so  just  a  view 


134  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

of  a  foreign  contemporary  literature.  "  The  instinct 
of  the  true  and  beautiful  supplied  the  inevitable  im- 
perfection of  her  knowledge,"  though  her  optimistic 
"  criticism  of  the  beauties "  tended  to  foster  an 
unsystematic  dilettantism. 

It  is  possible  that  Madame  de  Stael  attributed  more 
importance  to  the  portions  of  her  book  that  treat  of 
"  Philosophy  and  Ethics  "  and  of  "  Eeligion  and  Enthu- 
siasm "  than  the  event  has  proved  them  to  possess. 
To  be  partial  and  incomplete  was  more  dangerous  here 
than  in  literature,  and  German  metaphysicians  owe 
her  a  less  debt  for  the  effort  to  make  them  intelligible 
to  Frenchmen  than  they  do  to  Cousin  or  to  Heine.  It 
has  been  said,  and  truly,  that  the  history  of  idealism 
from  1780  to  1817  is  in  her  works,  but  that  persis- 
tently optimistic  idealism  was  rather  a  survival  of  the 
eighteenth  century  than  an  anticipation  of  the  domi- 
nant currents  of  philosophic  thought  in  the  nineteenth 
century.  Nor  was  it  a  survival  of.  what  was  strongest 
and  best  in  that  period.  As  Faguet  observes,  it  had 
in  it  more  of  Montesquieu  and  of  Vauvenargues  than 
of  Voltaire,  little  of  Rousseau,  nothing  of  Diderot. 
It  was  this  partial  reflection  of  the  eighteenth  century 
that  was  confirmed  and  revivified  in  her  by  contact  with 
German  idealism.  But  the  effect  of  this  attitude  of 
mind  on  literature,  as  appears  in  Germany  and  in 
Madame  de  Stael,  was  to  dwarf  the  sense  for  beauty  of 
form.  She,  at  least,  had  little  comprehension  of  liter- 
ary art,  whether  in  the  ancient  or  in  the  French  clas- 
sics. As  has  been  aptly  said,  "  she  represents  a 
moment  when  the  eighteenth  century  in  its  decline  no 
longer  comprehends  antique  art,  cares  no  longer  for  its 
own,  guards  and  cherishes  its  philosophic  ideas,  which 
it  feels  will  be  very  fruitful,  and,  as  for  a  new  art, 
questions,  searches,  doubts,  waits. " 


MADAME    DE    STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBKIAND.        135 

For  that  a  new  art  was  to  arise  from  the  chaos  of  the 
Revolution,  that  its  convulsions  were  to  be  the  birth- 
throes  of  a  new  critical  spirit,  was  the  first  article  of 
Madame  de  Steel's  critical  creed;  and  the  zeal  of  her 
preaching  carried  such  persuasion  that,  as  she  had  said 
of  Rousseau,  "  while  she  invented  nothing  she  set  all 
on  fire. "  And  so,  at  a  moment  when  France  was  in 
the  glow  of  its  new  cosmopolitanism,  she  was  able  to 
infuse  a  considerable  portion  of  the  European  spirit 
into  what  had  been,  till  then,  a  too  narrowly  national 
literature. 

Rut  if  T)P.  Steel's  crjtijfijfirn  ^^wfi  ifc{  flnlvp.nt.  power 

frOBO^the eighteen,^}]    fif.pt.nry    >»OT-  grp.nfp.gf  1itp.rfl.ry  r.nn-  1 1 

tp.mpnica.ry,  flhatpf^jftriiiTHi  fffliais1  th"  standard  of  lit-Jf 
erary  and  ethical  revolt  from  it.  He  joins  direct 
issue  with  her "comfortable  theory  of  perfectibility,  and 
to  her  deistic  optimism  he  opposes  first  a  skeptical, 
then  a  Christian  pessimism.  "  Everywhere  that 
Madame  de  Steel  sees  perfectibility,  I  see  Jesus 
Christ,  1  he  writes  to  Fontanes  in  1801;  and  the  sen- 
timent takes  such  hold  on  his  emotions  that  he  pres- 
ently transforms  himself  into  a  sworn  crusader,  more 
jealous  of  the  honor  of  the  mediaeval  church  than  even 
of  his  own  orthodoxy. 

But  there  is  something  histrionic  even  in  the  most 
solemn  protestations  of  Chateaubriand.  In  his  life  and 
in  his  books  he  poses  and  parades  his  art  with  a  colossal 
egoism  which  seems  to  have  overawed  contemporary 
critics  almost  as  much  as  it  exasperated  their  succes- 
sors. Napoleon  is  to  him  "the  tyrant  who  made  the 
world  tremble,  but  who  never  made  me  tremble. " 
He  imagines  the  Emperor's  daily  anxiety  to  be  to 
create  offices  that  will  bind  Chateaubriand's  proud 
spirit  to  his  service.  Indeed,  he  thinks  Napoleon's 


i 


136  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

fall  due  chiefly  to  his  own  "  Genius  of  Christianity. " 
Instinctively  he  ranks  himself  as  the  associate,  the 
equal,  possibly  the  superior  of  that  compeller  of  states. 
Hence  Chateaubriand  is  led  to  attribute  public  interest 
to  his  private  feelings,  and  in  his  books  the  subjec- 
tivity that  the  Classicists  had  carefully  suppressed  is 
omnipresent  and  confessed.  Thus  he  contributed 
essentially  to  the  revival  of  egoism  in  literature  that 
resulted  from  the  teachings  of  De  Stael.  All  his 
heroes  are  but  Chateaubriand  in  thin  disguise.  His 
Christianity  is  a  personal  sentiment,  not  a  product  of 
universal  reason.  What  made  him  a  knight  of  the 
cross  was  not  the  stern  beauty  of  truth,  but  the  poetry 
of  what  seemed  to  his  youth  a  lost  cause  and  the  mys- 
tic charm  cf  mediaeval  legend.  Even  in  his  account 
of  a  journey  to  Jerusalem,  the  thrilled  pilgrim  will 
exclaim :  "  I  weep,  but  't  is  to  the  sound  of  the  lyre  of 
Orpheus.  " 

Though  both  De  Stael  and  Chateaubriand  were  aris- 
tocrats, they  were  strongly  contrasted  in  their  lives, 
and  so  supplemented  each  other  in  their  literary 
influence.  She  owed  her  birth  to  Protestant  Switzer- 
land, he  to  profoundly  Catholic  Brittany. l  And  in  his 
boyhood  everything  combined  to  nurse  a  spirit  opposed 
in  all  ways  to  that  which  animated  Madame  Necker's 
Parisian  salon.  He  has  told  us  himself,  in  a  most 

1  Born  at  Saint-Malo,  1768;  died,  1848.  Works  in  order  of  time: 
Essai  sur  les  revolutions,  1797;  Atala,  1801;  Genie  du  christianisme, 
1802;  Atala  et  Rene,  1805;  Les  Martyrs,  1809;  Itineraire  d'un  voy- 
age de  Paris  &  Jerusalem,  1811;  then  political  pamphlets  till  the  col- 
lected edition  of  his  works,  1826-1831,  which  contains  the  "Natchez" 
and  the  "  Abencerrages ; "  Me'moires  d'outre-tombe,  1849-1850. 

Critical  appreciations  in  Lanson,  p.  868 ;  in  Faguet,  xix.  siecle ;  in 
Brunetiere,  Evolution  de  la  poesie  lyrique,  p.  83 ;  and  Evolution  de  la 
critique,  p.  180.  The  biographical  literature  is  cited  by  Lanson. 


MADAME   DE    STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.        137 

effective  passage,  how  the  warm  and  simple  piety  of 
his  mother,  the  distant  reserve  of  his  father,  the  mys- 
terious vastness  of  the  neighboring  ocean,  the  strange 
legends  of  that  simple  and  childlike  people,  combined 
to  foster  in  him  the  poet  and  the  mystic,  and  to  evoke 
the  religious  sentiment. 

In  Brittany  he  passed  his  childhood.  For  his  educa- 
tion he  went  to  Dol  and  Rennes,  towns  not  too  distant 
to  break  the  Breton  spell.  He  entered  the  army  at 
twenty,  and  was  tempted  to  try  his  fortune  in  India, 
a  land  attractive  to  his  imaginative  temperament.  But 
the  Revolution  diverted  him  from  this  project,  and 
presently  sent  the  young  enthusiast  to  the  opposite  side 
of  the  globe.  In  1791  he  went  to  America  on  a  gov- 
ernment commission,  ostensibly  to  seek  the  Northwest 
Passage,  which,  however,  he  neither  found  nor  sought. 
But  his  journey  was  far  from  fruitless  to  himself  or 
to  France ;  for  he  travelled,  though  not  perhaps  so 
extensively  as  he  implies,  among  the  great  lakes  and 
prairies  of  the  West,  and  amid  the  luxuriant  vegeta- 
tion of  semi-tropical  Florida,  stimulating  his  vivid 
imagination  by  intercourse  with  Indian  tribes  and  by 
the  solitude  of  primeval  forests.  These  influences  first 
revealed  the  poet  to  himself,  and  were  in  their  turn 
revealed  in  all  his  future  works,  but  most  brilliantly 
in  "  Natchez, "  in  °  Rene',  "  and  in  "  Atala.  " 

Chateaubriand,  with  a  considerable  part  of  the  nobil- 
ity of  France,  sympathized  with  the  early  efforts  of 
the  Revolutionists,  for  he  was  convinced  that  political 
reform  was  a  necessity.  But  the  excesses  of  1791  and 
1792  sobered  his  enthusiasm  on  his  return  to  France, 
where  his  parents  arranged  for  him  a  hasty  and  un- 
happy marriage.  This,  together  with  the  execution  of 
the  king,  made  him  cast  his  lot  with  the  party  of  the 


138  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

emigres,  though  he  was  not  then  or  ever  wholly  in 
sympathy  with  the  policy  of  reaction  that  they  repre- 
sented. But  the  hopes  of  the  Bourbons  were  presently 
crushed  at  Valmy ;  and  Chateaubriand,  sick  and 
wounded,  went  to  England,  where  he  remained  till 
1800.  These  seven  years  of  exile  could  not  but  have 
some  effect  on  his  literary  and  ethical  views,  v  but 
he  learned  much  less  in  England  than  Voltaire  or 
Beaumarchais  had  done.  He  supported  himself  by 
translating,  and  found  leisure  to  write  a  somewhat  pes- 
simistic and  skeptical  essay  on  "  Eevolutions, "  which 
is  interesting  for  its  youthful  declaration  of  independ- 
ence from  the  smug  optimism  of  Condorcet.  It  was  in 
England,  too,  that  he  elaborated  "  Natchez, "  "  Eene, " 
and  "  Atala, "  in  which  American  Indians  are  idealized 
in  the  spirit  of  Bernardin's  "  Paul  and  Virginid  "  and 
Eousseau's  "  natural  state. "  Therefore  in  substance 
they  carry  his  conviction,  while  in  form  they  hover 
between  poetry  and  prose  in  a  way  that  may  repel 
modern  taste,  but  greatly  fascinated  that  of  his 
time. 

Though  these  books  were  begun  before  the  publica- 
tion of  the  "  Essay  on  Eevolutions, "  there  is  a  change 
to  be  noted  in  their  ethical  position  that  appears  most 
clearly  in  his  attitude  toward  Christianity.  The 
"  Essay  "  of  1797  was  coldly  skeptical ;  in  1801 "  Atala  " 
was  warmly  sympathetic.  This  change  Chateaubriand 
attributes  to  the  death  of  his  mother,  in  1798 ;  but  he 
is  not  always  a  trustworthy  witness  about  himself. 
He  mingles,  like  Goethe,  "  fiction  and  truth ; "  but, 
unlike  Goethe,  he  does  not  say  so.  Still,  however 
that  may  be,  "  Atala  "  struck  a  note  that  set  all  hearts 
vibrating ;  it  won  immediate  and  universal  popularity. 
The  eloquent  descriptions  of  nature  showed  that  the 


MADAME   DE   STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.        139 

author  had  rare  powers  of  minute  observation,  and  the 
use  that  he  made  of  it  roused  the  dormant  spirit  of 
romantic  idealism.  It  gave  expression  to  a  mental 
state  that  had  not  yet  found  a  voice  in  France ;  it  an- 
ticipated much  in  Lamartine  and  in  Hugo.  At  the 
opening  of  the  century  Chateaubriand  had  no  impor- 
tant rival ;  and  even  when  Madame  de  Stael  claimed  a 
place  beside  him,  he  seemed  still  the  leading  figure  in 
French  letters  till  Lamartine  charmed  the  world  with 
the  fascinating  anodyne  of  his  "  Meditations. " 

Encouraged  by  the  reception  of  "  Atala, "  he  brought 
the  "  Genius  of  Christianity  "  to  a  close  just  at  the 
moment  (1802)  when  Napoleon  was  on  the  eve  of  his 
official  recognition  and  restoration  of  the  National 
Church,  which,  indeed,  had  been  practically  restored 
since  1796.  Chateaubriand's  book  has  been  called,  and 
is,  a  brilliant  bit  of  special  pleading;  but  none  the 
less  it  served  its  purpose  and  Napoleon's.  To  discuss 
its  author's  real  convictions  is  beside  our  purpose.  He 
himself  thought  his  mind  "  made  to  believe  in  noth- 
ing, not  even  in  itself;  made  to  disdain  all,  — gran- 
deurs, pettinesses,  peoples,  kings;  and  yet  dominated 
by  a  rational  instinct  of  submission  to  all  that  was 
beautiful, — religion,  justice,  equality,  liberty,  glory." 
Hence  one  might  infer  that  it  was  an  aesthetic  rather 
than  a  moral  attraction  that  drew  him  to  the  Chris- 
tian Church,  into  which  he  could  thus  carry  his 
pessimism  and,  indeed,  his  fundamental  skepticism, 
while  all  the  time  he  was  probably  as  sincere  as  he 
knew  how  to  be,  and  only  gave  a  striking  illustration 
of  the  price  that  rational  beings  must  pay  for  senti- 
mental emotions.  Logical  consistency  was  never  his 
prominent  characteristic,  nor  is  reason  the  pole-star  of 
the  "  Genius  of  Christianity.  "  But  though  its  argu- 


140  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

ment  is  often  puerile,  its  passion  and  its  eloquence 
carried  it  quickly  to  the  hearts  of  a  public  weary  of 
the  dead-sea  fruit  of  Encyclopaedist  philosophy,  a 
public  whose  languid  will  to  believe  could  be  more 
easily  thrilled  by  rhetoric  than  moved  by  reason. 
Author  and  readers  were  less  interested  to  find  that 
Christianity  was  true  than  that  it  was  sentimentally 
poetic,  beautifully  pathetic,  artistically  sesthetic. 

This  book  won  Chateaubriand  a  diplomatic  post  in 
Rome,  but  his  intriguing  spirit  made  it  necessary  to 
transfer  him  to  Switzerland ;  and  after  the  execution 
of  the  Due  d'Enghien  he  resigned  all  diplomatic 
preferment  and  criticised  Napoleon  freely,  exposing 
himself  to  more  than  he  actually  suffered,  though  his 
oration  at  his  reception  to  the  Academy  occasioned  a 
brief  exile,  and  a  newspaper 1  that  he  controlled  was 
suppressed.  This  check  to  his  political  activity  re- 
aroused  in  him  the  spirit  of  travel,  but  not  till  he  had 
discovered  and  proclaimed  in  "  Rene*  "  that  maladie 
du  siecle,  the  morbid  toying  with  melancholy  that  had 
inspired  "  Werther  "  in  Germany,  and  spread  its  conta- 
gion to  England  in  "  Childe  Harold. "  Having  left 
this  virulent  bacillus  behind  him,  Chateaubriand  set 
out  on  an  Eastern  journey ;  visited  Greece,  Turkey, 
Asia  Minor,  Palestine,  and,  on  his  return,  Tunis  and 
Spain,  carrying  with  him  everywhere  the  same  keen 
but  mournful  eye  that  had  seen  such  vivid  and  sombre 
pictures  in  the  American  forests  and  prairies,  and  the 
same  imagination  that  had  shed  a  romantic  halo  over 
all. 

The  direct  result  of  this  trip  was  the  "  Narrative  of 
a  Journey  from  Paris  to  Jerusalem ;  "  but  he  first  em- 
bodied his  impressions  in  "  Les  Martyrs, "  which,  in- 

1  "Le  Mercure,"  founded  in  1807. 


MADAME    DE    STAEL   AND    CHATEAUBRIAND.        141 

deed  he  began  before  setting  out  on  his  journey.  This 
is  a  prose  epic  of  rising  Christianity  and  sinking  pagan- 
ism, that  carries  its  action  from  the  Orient  to  Gaul, 
and  reaches  its  climax  in  the  amphitheatre  at  Borne. 
"  The  Last  of  the  Abencerrages, "  printed  in  1826, 
was  also  a  belated  fruit  of  this  journey.  Indeed, 
practically  all  the  work  of  Chateaubriand  that  is  still 
read  with  pleasure,  or  with  curiosity  that  it  should 
have  excited  pleasure,  is  included  in  the  eleven  years 
1801-1811.  With  the  fall  of  Napoleon,  his  activity 
as  an  ethical  and  imaginative  writer  yields  almost 
wholly  to  the  demands  of  party  politics,  while  the 
purely  literary  work  that  then  appeared  was  only 
what  prudence  had  withheld  from  the  censors  of  the 
Empire. 

Yet  in  its  sphere  this  political  writing  is  closely 
parallel  in  its  methods  and  in  its  effect  to  the  former ; 
it  shows  the  same  "  opulence  of  imagination  and  pov- 
erty of  heart. "  His  first  production  in  this  field, 
"  Buonaparte  and  the  Bourbons  "  (1814),  is  a  sort  of 
"  Genius  of  Koyalty  "  modelled  on  the  "  Genius  of 
Christianity. "  Louis  XVIII.  thought  its  bitter  elo- 
quence and  hate  worth  a  hundred  thousand  men  to  the 
Legitimist  cause.  But  here,  as  there,  his  feeling  has 
more  sentimental  warmth  than  logical  consistency. 
He  tells  us  himself  that  in  1826,  in  spite  of  all  he  had 
suffered  for  the  House  of  Bourbon,  he  was  still  thought 
a  doubtful  Christian  and*  a  dubious  Eoyalist.  Hence 
it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that  he  was  as  inconvenient 
to  his  friends  when  in  power  as  to  his  enemies  when 
in  opposition.  Various  diplomatic  posts  were  aban- 
doned for  vigorous  pamphlet  wars  on  the  ministries  he 
disliked,  and  at  the  close  of  the  Restoration  period 
he  seemed  drifting  toward  the  liberal  party.  But  a 


142  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

pessimist  is  not  happy  to  be  in  the  majority,  and  the 
triumph  of  the  Orleanists  brought  him  back  promptly 
to  the  defence  of  the  lost  cause.  "  I  cannot  serve  pas- 
sions in  their  triumph, "  he  had  said.  "  Always  ready 
to  devote  myself  to  the  unfortunate,  I  understand  noth- 
ing of  prosperity. "  These  sentiments  were  certainly 
characteristic  and  possibly  sincere;  those  who  wept 
over  "  Eend  "  thought  them  noble  and  edifying.  But 
as  he  realized  the  hopeless  case  of  the  Legitimists, 
he  gradually  lost  heart,  and  toward  the  close  of  his 
life,  though  he  was  still  the  lion  of  literary  salons, 
he  sank  into  a  discouraged  silence,  occupying  his 
gloomy  mood  with  translating  "  Paradise  Lost "  and 
writing  a  life  of  the  ascetic  Eancd.  He  revised  and 
completed  also  his  "  Memoirs  from  beyond  the  Tomb, " 
—  "  Eene  with  documentary  evidence, "  as  it  has  been 
wittily  called,  —  a  work  of  quite  unique  conceit  and 
much  political  prejudice,  but  yet  of  remarkable  elo- 
quence and  some  historic  interest.  He  died  on  the 
fourth  of  July,  1848,  in  the  midst  of  a  social  revolu- 
tion that  must  have  shrouded  his  pessimism  in  still 
deeper  gloom. 

The  literary  significance  of  Chateaubriand  is  to  be 
sought  in  "  Atala, "  in  "  Eene*, "  in  the  "  Genius  of 
Christianity, "  and  in  the  "  Martyrs ;  "  and  to  understand 
their  effect  it  is  necessary  to  bear  in  mind  somewhat 
of  their  contents.  "  Atala  "  is  a  short  idyl  of  a  young 
Indian  girl  of  that  name,  who  loves  Chactas,  an  Indian 
captive  among  her  nation.  But  she  is  a  Christian,  and 
has  sworn  to  her  mother  a  perpetual  virginity.  Their 
tale  is  told  by  Chactas  to  Eene-Chateaubriand  as  they 
float  together  down  the  broad  Ohio.  This  thoroughly 
romantic  Indian  has  been  in  Europe,  and  has  a  nature 
of  strangely  wedded  culture  and  savagery.  A  solitary 


MADAME  DE   STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.        143 

missonary,  Father  Aubry,  completes  the  dramatis  per- 
sonce  of  the  little  tragedy,  where  duty  conquers  love, 
but  only  by  the  sacrifice  of  the  life  of  the  gentle 
heroine.  The  simple  and  solemn  pathos  of  the  story 
came  like  a  new  birth  to  men  whose  ears  were  dulled 
with  the  verses  of  Delille,  and  its  austere  Christianity 
was  a  revelation  to  those  who  had  sought  a  vain 
satisfaction  in  the  negations  of  Voltaire  and  Diderot. 
Slighter  even  than  Goethe's  "  Werther,"  it  had  a  re- 
nown almost  as  wide  and  as  lasting.  It  was  trans- 
lated into  the  chief  languages  of  Europe,  and  is  said 
to  have  found  its  way  into  the  very  penetralia  of  the 
Sultan's  seraglio. 

"  Atala  "  is  certainly  untrue  to  savage  nature ;  its 
pathos  is  artificial,  but  its  publication  is  a  date  of 
importance  in  French  literature,  for  it  marks  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Komantic  School.  The  danger  was  felt  in- 
stinctively by  the  Classicists,  who  bitterly  attacked  its 
aesthetics ;  for  though  it  was  restrained  in  comparison 
to  later  works  of  Romantic  imagination,  they  saw  that 
it  was  inconsistent  with  the  spirit  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  even  more  than  with  that  of  the  seventeenth. 
And  the  work  of  Chateaubriand  that  followed  only 
intensified  this  antagonism;  for  what  is  involved  in 
"  Atala  "  is  made  the  central  thesis  of  the  "  Genius  of 
Christianity, "  his  most  ambitious  effort,  both  literary 
and  ethical,  though  the  elaborate  table  of  contents 
prefixed  to  that  work  promises  a  more  logical  treatment 
than  the  book  realizes,  while  the  apparatus  of  De- 
fence, Letters,  Notes,  and  Explanations  at  the  close, 
suggests  a  learned  treatise  rather  than  an  oratorical 
plea. 

The  dogmas  and  doctrines  of  Christianity  are  first 
discussed;  then  its  poetry,  its  art  and  literature,  and 


144  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

its  worship.  Each  part,  too,  has  the  appearance  of 
rigid  analysis.  Thus  the  second  elaborately  compares 
classical  and  Christian  poetry,  and  closes  with  an  an- 
tithetical study  of  the  Bible  and  Homer.  Each  sec- 
tion, also,  is  analyzed.  If  the  apologist  is  contrasting 
pagan  and  Christian  character,  he  speaks  first  of  hus- 
bands and  wives,  then  of  fathers,  mothers,  sons,  daugh- 
ters, priests,  and  warriors ;  and  in  every  case  he  finds 
that  the  Christian  author  has  refined  and  embellished 
the  classic  ideals.  The  true  faith  is  also  the  more  beau- 
tiful and  the  more  sympathetic.  But  if  this  description 
applies  to  a  great  part  of  the  "  Genius, "  the  author 
rises  also  at  times  to  veritable  theological  dithyram- 
bics,  as  when,  for  instance,  he  undertakes  to  prove  the 
existence  of  God  from  the  marvels  of  Nature ;  and  some 
of  his  finest  passages  are  descriptive  panegyrics,  such 
as  the  remarkable  chapters  on  the  Mass  that  open  the 
concluding  part,  or  the  subsequent  section  on  Christian 
missions,  where  the  little  story  of  "  Atala  "  may  have 
had  its  original  place. 

Such  a  book  draws  more  from  imagination  than  from 
reason,  and  appeals  to  the  emotions  more  than  to  the 
sober  sense  of  its  readers.  Here  one  is  asked  to  con- 
sider "  whether  the  divinities  of  paganism  have  poeti- 
cally the  superiority  over  the  Christian  divinities " 
(1.  iv.  ch.  4).  Here  foi  (faith)  is  commended  for  its 
supposed  connection  with  foyer  (hearthstone);  the 
three  Graces  are  adduced  to  prove  the  Trinity,  and 
teleology  finds  its  reduction  to  the  absurd  in  the  mi- 
gration of  birds  precisely  at  the  time  when  they  are 
convenient  for  human  food,  and  in  the  assumption  that 
"  domestic  animals  are  born  with  exactly  enough 
instinct  to  be  tamed.  "  Yes,  Chateaubriand  will  offer 
the  constellation  of  the  Southern  Cross  as  a  witness  of 


MADAME   DE   STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.        145 

Christianity,  and  defend  the  celibacy  of  the  clergy  by 
Mai  thus'  Law  !  And  yet  the  student  of  literary  evolu- 
tion will  perceive  that  it  is  just  such  a  revindication 
of  the  rights  of  sentiment  that  was  a  necessary  condi- 
tion of  the  revival  of  the  personal  forms  of  literature, 
and  especially  of  lyric  poetry.  It  is  the  spirit  of  the 
"  Genius  "  that  inspires  the  first  utterances  of  Hugo  and 
Lamartine.  Chateaubriand  supplements  and  continues 
the  protest  of  Eousseau's  "  Savoyard  Vicar  "  against 
the  Gradgrind  materialism  of  the  Encyclopaedists. 

"  Ken<*  "  had  formed  part  of  the  "  Genius ;"  but  it 
had  closer  affiliations  with  "  Atala  "  than  with  Chris- 
tianity, and  was  reprinted  separately  in  1807,  possi- 
bly, as  has  been  suggested,  to  induce  those  to  read  it 
who  would  not  read  the  "  Geiiie, "  and  those  to  read  the 
"  G6nie  "  who  did  not  care  to  find  "  Rene*  "  there.  This 
mouthpiece  of  Chateaubriand's  dilettante  pessimism 
had  been  the  supposed  narrator  of  "  Atala, "  and  the 
scene  is  once  more  laid  in  the  primeval  forests  of  the 
Mississippi  valley.  Chactas  reappears  ;  and  there  is  a 
mission  priest,  more  human  than  Aubry,  who  speaks 
for  Chateaubriand  the  Christian  idealist,  while  Rene 
exhibits  the  blase  aristocrat,  nursing  his  world-pain 
like  another  Werther. 

This  disconsolate  young  man  had  passed  most  of  his 
boyhood  "  watching  the  fugitive  clouds  "  and  listen- 
ing to  the  rain.  He  had  a  sister1  who  presently 
turned  nun,  but  natural  inconstancy  aided  prejudice  to 
divert  him  from  a  like  design.  He  nursed  the  germs 
of  melancholy  amid  the  ruins  of  Greece  and  Italy. 
Modern  civilization  accentuated  his  idle  ennui.  He 
sought  the  gentle  children  of  Nature,  the  Indians  of 

1  Obviously  studied  from  Chateaubriand's  own  sister  Lucile,  who 
died  in  1804. 

10 


146  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

French  Louisiana,  who,  more  sensible  and  happy  than 
he,  had  let  life  slip  by,  "  seated  tranquil  beneath  their 
oaks,"  their  only  melancholy  an  excess  of  bliss  that 
they  checked  by  a  glance  at  heaven.  Still,  brief  expe- 
rience sufficed  to  convince  him  of  his  incompatibility 
even  with  this  society ;  and  he  renounced  all  intercourse, 
save  with  Chactas  and  the  priest,  to  whom  he  related 
his  "  secret  sentiments  "  and  the  "  languid  struggles  " 
of  his  "  Romanesque  spirit "  against  the  necessary  evil 
of  life. 

It  is  these  "  secret  sentiments, "  of  which  those  of 
Bend's  sort  had  always  enough  and  to  spare,  that  were 
the  charm  of  "  Rene*, "  and  the  literary  source  and 
origin  of  the  paralysis  of  the  will  nursed  by  vain 
dreams,  that  maladie  du  si&cle  that  has  sicklied  o'er 
the  thought  of  so  many  in  France  who  seemed  capable 
of  better  things,  —  of  Lamartine,  of  De  Vigny,  and  in 
another  way  of  De  Musset  and  the  young  George  Sand. 
It  blights  the  Joseph  Delorme  of  Sainte-Beuve  and 
the  Antony  of  Dumas.  It  may  be  traced  also,  though 
masked  by  the  stronger  power  of  Byron,  in  the  dramas 
of  Victor  Hugo. 

This  little  tale  of  morbid,  introspective  pessimism 
struck  a  note  that  swayed  the  whole  fabric  of  society 
by  the  responsive  vibrations  that  it  awakened.  It  did 
this  because,  though  it  was  unnatural,  it  was  genuine. 
The  book  was  affected,  but  so  were  the  man  and  the 
age.  If  Rend  tells  us  that  "  people  weary  him  by  dint 
of  loving  him, "  the  private  correspondence  of  Chateau- 
briand is  full  of  the  same  aristocratic  melancholy,  full 
of  assurances  that  he  is  "  quite  blase  and  indifferent  to 
everything  but  religion/  dragging  dreamily  his  ennui 
with  his  days,  and  crying  for  some  one  to  deliver  him 
from  the  "  insane  impulse  to  live. "  That  sigh  of  Job, 


MADAME   DE    STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.        147 

"  My  soul  is  fatigued  with  my  life, "  is  the  burden  and 
refrain  of  "  Natchez.  " 

"  Les  Martyrs  "  exhibits  the  "  Genius  "  applied  to 
Eomantic  fiction.  In  a  cadenced  style  and  epic 
diction  that  need  only  rhyme  and  metre  to  make  a 
poem,  Chateaubriand  has  contrasted  the  morals,  sacri- 
fices, and  ceremonial  of  pagan  and  Christian  worship 
in  the  times  of  Diocletian.  Here  the  reader  may  find 
"  the  language  of  Genesis  beside  that  of  the  Odyssey, " 
and  see  "  the  Jupiter  of  Homer  beside  the  Jehovah  of 
Milton. "  But  Chateaubriand  has  fallen  into  the  snare 
that  is  stretched  for  every  historical  novelist.  Not 
only  has  he  forced  chronology  and  geography  in  his 
zeal  to  include  the  principal  characters  of  the  ante- 
Nicene  church,  but  he  has  enlarged  his  scope  so  that 
he  takes  in  the  philosophes  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, and  even  the  French  Kevolution.  Julian  the 
Apostate  reaches  the  hand  to  Voltaire,  and  Homer  to 
Volney.  The  result,  as  his  most  generous  critic  has 
admitted,  is  a  grandiose  failure,  composite  and  artifi- 
cial, original  only  when  it  gives  up  the  vain  attempt 
to  imitate  Dante  and  Milton,  and  abandons  the  reli- 
gious epic  for  the  historical  novel.  But  even  here  the 
author  staggers  a  little  under  the  weight  of  his  anti- 
quarian lore.  He  seems  intent  on  describing  the  whole 
of  the  then  known  world,  from  Eome  to  the  Thebaid 
and  from  the  Netherlands  to  Arcady;  and  in  later 
editions  he  fortified  the  book  with  prefaces,  analyses, 
and  notes,  that  might  find  a  more  appropriate  grave  in 
the  "  Revue  des  questions  historiques. "  In  its  day, 
however,  the  book  was  repeatedly  reprinted,  and 
critics  still  couple  the  name  of  its  hero,  Eudore,  with 
Corneille's  Polyeucte,  to  prove  how  narrowly  false  it 
is  to  exclude,  with  Boileau,  "  the  terrible  mysteries 


148  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

of  the  Christian  faith  "  from  the  realm  of  literary 
art. 

The  "  Journey  from  Paris  to  Jerusalem"  illustrates 
from  another  side  the  same  combination  of  fiction  and 
guide-book,  of  pseudo-Christian  and  crypto-pagan. 
Here  the  weary  dilettante  grows  dejected  at  Troy,  and 
discouraged  over  the  past  glories  of  Sparta  and  Athens, 
while  he  nurses  his  mind  to  a  proper  desolation  for  the 
ruins  of  Jerusalem,  Egypt,  and  Carthage.  His  powers 
of  natural  description,  always  remarkable,  are  here  at 
their  height ;  and  the  sea  proves  a  fruitful  inspiration 
to  his  mournful  muse ;  but  even  the  best  passages  are 
marred  by  intrusive  subjectivity,  by  what  he  calls 
"  the  secret  and  ineffable  charms  of  a  soul  enjoying 
itself. "  The  "  Journey  "  is  Chateaubriand's  most 
cited  work ;  but  the  citations  are  almost  wholly  con- 
fined to  the  objective  part  of  the  book,  his  descriptions 
of  Nature  and  historical  evocations. 

This  brings  us  to  speak  of  one  of  the  most  important 
and  enduring  results  of  Chateaubriand's  writing.  He 
is  the  first  recreator  of  the  past,  the  inspirer  of  the 
modern  popular  historian.  He  first  drew  attention  to 
the  literary  mine  that  lay  hid  in  the  middle  ages 
and  in  Christian  antiquity,  treasures  exploited  almost 
too  eagerly  by  the  Romanticists.  "  Imagination, "  he 
had  said,  "  is  to  erudition  the  scout  that  is  always 
reconnoitring. "  In  his  hands  history  became  poetry, 
revealing  new  possibilities  to  the  student  and  new 
fields  to  literature.  The  exacjt  studies  of  his  predeces- 
sors may  have  contained  the  truth ;  it  was  reserved  for 
this  artist  to  make  that  truth  live  again.  But 
Chateaubriand  was  also  the  founder  of  the  modern 
descriptive  school;  and  he  was  able  to  be  this,  be- 
cause, as  we  have  seen,  he  added  to  his  love  for  the 


MADAME   DE   STAEL   AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.        149 

ages  of  faith  a  na'ive  paganism,  so  that,  as  some  one 
has  wittily  observed,  "  his  pilgrim  staff  changed  occa- 
sionally into  a  thyrsus. "  From  this  pagan  element 
came  an  increased  love  of  Nature,  an  affectionate  study 
of  her  moods  as  minute  as  that  of  Bernardin,  with  an 
idealization  and  personification  of  her  changing  beau- 
ties that  suggest  Ossian  and  presage  the  Eomantic 
School,  of  whose  advent  there  had  already  been  signs 
in  Kousseau,  Buffon,  and  Saint-Pierre.  But  Chateau- 
briand was  first  in  France  to  describe  scenes  with  a  vivid 
imagery  that  conjured  before  the  mind  horizons  such 
as  his  readers  had  never  seen.  Whether  these  hori- 
zons were  true  or  false,  whether  his  classic  Greece  or 
his  Merovingian  France  or  his  Natchez  Indians  had 
anything  in  history  or  in  fact  to  correspond  to  them, 
is  from  a  literary  point  of  view  wholly  indifferent.  It 
is  enough  that  they  gave  a  vivid  sensation  of  novelty, 
and  opened  all  history  and  nature  to  the  poetic  vision 
of  the  next  generation,  as  the  "  Genius  of  Christianity  " 
had  already  opened  the  treasures  of  its  historic  faith. 
Without  Chateaubriand  it  is  as  hard  to  conceive 
Thierry  or  Michelet  as  it  is  Flaubert  or  Lpti.1 

If  it  was  Chateaubriand's  ambition  "to  rival  Bos- 
suet  and  ruin  Voltaire,"  he  undertook  tasks  both  of 
which  were  beyond  a  man  who  had  neither  the  robust 
faith  of  the  one,  nor  the  mocking  confidence  of  the  other. 
And  yet  he  marks  the  close  of  a  period  of  literary 
evolution  that  had  begun  with  the  Pleiad  two  centu- 
ries and  a  half  before,  and  he  marks  also  the  beginning 
of  a  new  era.  He,  probably  more  than  De  Stael,  per- 
suaded the  new  generation  that  it  was  safe  to  break 
with  tradition,  with  those  imitations  of  imitations  that 

1  Chateaubriand's  influence  on  lyric  poetry  is  discussed  by  Bru- 
netiere,  ^Evolution  de  la  poesie  lyrique,  i.  83-96. 


150  MODERN  FEENCH  LITERATURE. 

had  been  sapping  the  life  of  French  literature  since 
the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century.  He  convinced 
them  of  what  she  had  taught  by  implication,  —  that, 
since  literature  must  be  in  touch  with  the  people, 
Trench  literature,  if  it  would  be  to  France  what  Greek 
and  Latin  were  to  Greece  and  Italy,  must  be  national 
in  its  aspirations  and  Christian  in  its  spirit.  But  to 
do  this  was  to  point  the  way  to  the  greatest  literary 
achievements  of  the  next  generation. 

This  has  been  clear  to  nearly  all  the  French  critics 
that  have  followed.  "  He  changed, "  said  Villemain, 
"  in  the  moral  order  a  part  of  the  opinions  of  the  cen- 
tury ;  he  brought  back  literature  to  religion,  and  the 
religious  spirit  to  the  spirit  of  liberty ;  he  has  been  a 
renovator  in  imagination,  criticism,  and  history.  "  This 
may  seem  an  exaggeration;  and  yet  Sainte-Beuve  is, 
perhaps,  too  cautious  when  he  damns  him  with  faint 
praise  as  "  the  most  striking  of  his  contemporaries  at 
the  beginning  of  the  century, "  for  Nisard  is  willing  to 
grant  him  "  the  initial  inspiration  as  well  as  the  final 
impulse  of  all  the  durable  innovations  of  the  first  half 
of  the  century  in  poetry,  history,  and  criticism ; "  and 
Brunetiere  is  constrained  to  admit  that  he  held  for 
those  decades  "  a  literary  royalty  comparable  only  to 
that  of  Voltaire. "  So  there  was  a  measure  of  truth 
in  Fontanes'  bold  words  to  Napoleon,  that  Chateau- 
briand shed  glory  on  his  reign ;  and  in  the  tribute  of 
the  historian  Thierry,  who,  writing  in  1840,  declares 
that  all  the  typical  thinkers  of  the  century  "  had  met 
Chateaubriand  at  the  source  of  their  studies,  at  their 
first  inspirations.  Not  one  but  should  say  to  him,  as 
Dante  to  Virgil :  '  Thou  leader,  thou  lord,  and  thou 
master. '  " 

Thus  in  Chateaubriand  and  in  Madame  de  Stael  we 


MADAME  DE   STAEL  AND   CHATEAUBRIAND.         151 

i  should  recognize  not  only  the  beginning,  but  the  source 
(  of  the  literary  evolution  of  their  century.  From  her 
came  its  new  ideas,  from  him  its  new  art.  His  style 
has  left  its  mark  on  French  poetry,  history,  fiction,  on 
the  very  language  itself.  To  George  Sand  he  seemed 
"  the  greatest  writer  of  the  century."  De  Vigny  and 
Hugo,  Flaubert  and  Leconte  de  Lisle,  even  Lamartine, 
saw  in  him  their  model,  "the  incomparable  artist." 
It  was  not  till  Naturalism  rose  that  his  star  began  to 
wane. 


152  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTEK   V. 

THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL. 

IN  1823  a  company  of  English  actors  undertook  to 
present  in  Paris  the  masterpieces  of  Shakspere.  They 
were  hissed,  hooted ;  an  angry  spectator  shouted  that 
Shakspere  was  the  aide-de-camp  of  Wellington ;  others 
translated  their  feelings  into  action,  and  threw  at  the 
stage  such  missiles  as  came  to  hand  with  so  much  vio- 
lence that  an  actress  was  injured.  To  hate  England 
was  the  ABC  of  patriotism;  Germany  was  hardly 
more  popular,  and  a  literary  reform  that  seemed  to 
savor  of  either  was  condemned  in  advance.  /  It  is 
harder  for  the  conquered  to  be  generous  than  for  the 
conqueror;  and  in  the  years  that  followed  Waterloo, 
those  who  preached  a  narrow  nationalism  in  literature, 
the  classicism  of  the  seventeenth  century  as  inter- 
preted by  the  eighteenth,  had  an  easy  task  in  rousing 
the  prejudices  even  of  the  cultured. 

Yet  already  there  were  signs  of  change  in  popular 
feeling.  While  the  Classicists  diligently  ploughed 
and  harrowed  their  sterile  fields  and  reaped  their 
stunted  crops,  the  younger  generation  was  dissatisfied 
and  restless.  At  first  the  spread  of  these  feelings  was 
checked  by  a  curious  though  not  unnatural  coincidence. 
Up  to  that  time  the  liberals  in  politics  had  been  reac- 
tionaries in  literature,  while  the  literary  reformers 
handicapped  their  cause  with  a  sentimental  devotion 
to  throne  and  altar.  One  sees  this  in  the  new  spa- 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  153 

pers  of  the  time ;  but,  best  of  all,  in  Hugo's  youthful 
poems  —  "  his  follies  before  he  was  born, "  as  he  used  to 
call  them  —  and  in  his  Royalist  "  Odes  and  Ballads. " 
Something  of  the  same  spirit  can  be  found  in  all  the 
future  leaders  of  the  Eomantic  School.  Thus,  for  a 
time,  independence  and  individualism  in  literature 
became  identified  with  mediae valism  and  the  ultra- 
Catholic  Restoration.  But  it  was  soon  seen  that  this 
connection  was  purely  fortuitous.  In  the  year  after 
the  English  actors  had  been  driven  from  the  stage,  the 
foundation  of  the  "  Globe  "  newspaper  testified  that 
the  new  spirit  accorded  with  the  most  ardent  patriot- 
ism ;  and  prejudice  was  hardly  dispelled  before  writers 
of  the  younger  school  —  Thierry,  Thiers,  Guizot,  and 
Mignet  in  history,  Cousin  in  philosophy,  Lamartine 
and  Hugo  in  poetry  —  showed  to  the  world  that  the 
genius  of  France  was  ready  to  break  with  its  outworn 
past. 

Several  elements  combined  to  make  these  years 
favorable  to  a  revolt  from  tradition.  The  rising  gen- 
eration had  passed  their  youth  in  a  time  when  classical 
studies  and  the  amenities  of  literature  were  neglected 
or  obscured  by  the  rush  of  events  and  the  glories  of 
the  Empire.  The  energies  nursed  in  a  time  of  action 
were  directed  now  to  the  field  of  imagination,  and 
claimed  a  broader  scope  than  had  sufficed  for  their 
elders.1  This  movement  of  the  world-spirit  was  by 
no  means  confined  to  France,  and  the  cosmopolitanism 
that  had  been  preached  by  De  Stael  aided  it  by  trans- 
lations from  the  English  and  German  Romanticists. 
As  early  as  1809  Constant  had  adapted  Schiller's 

1  So  Hugo  says  :  — 

Nous  froissons  dans  nos  maine,  h^las  inoccupdes, 
Des  lyres  a  rtefaut  d'dpdes, 
Nous  cbantons  corame  on  combattrait. 


154  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

"  Wallenstein  "  to  French  taste;  Schlegel's  "  Lectures 
on  Dramatic  Literature  "  were  translated  in  1814,  and 
in  the  same  year  the  Spanish  "  Romance  of  the  Cid  " 
was  done  into  French.  A  little  later  Raynouard 
edited  an  anthology  of  the  Troubadours,  and  Scott's 
essay  on  them  was  translated.  In  1821  Shakspere  and 
Schiller  were  turned  into  French,  and  Byron  soon  fol- 
lowed, with  such  a  numerous  company  of  works  of 
like  tendency  that  enumeration  is  at  once  tedious  and 
superfluous. 1 

The  ferment  of  independence  spread  rapidly.  All 
the  young  men  were  for  liberty,  and  their  talents  made 
them  each  year  more  and  more  the  lions  of  the  literary 
salons,  while  the  conservative  "  periwigs  "  grew  less 
supercilious  and  less  confident.  In  1827  the  tide  had 
set  so  decidedly  that  the  season's  dramatic  success 
was  achieved  by  a  company  of  English  actors,  among 
them  Kean,  Macready,  and  Kemble ;  and  in  December 
of  that  year  the  impression  of  their  performances  was 
fixed  and  formulated  by  Hugo's  profession  of  dramatic 
faith  in  the  preface  to  his  "  Cromwell. "  From  this 
point  to  1830  the  Romantic  emancipation  of  the  ego 
makes  a  constant  crescendo  culminating  in  the  epic 
conflict  in  which  Hugo's  "  Hernani  "  served  as  a  mod- 
ern body  of  Patroclus,  till  the  Revolution  of  July 
(1830)  crowned  the  Romanticist  triumph.  For  liter- 
ary reform  was  now  wholly  identified  with  the  liberal 
movement  in  politics,  while  the  reactionaries  had  be- 
come involved  in  the  popular  condemnation  that  swept 
away  the  Legitimist  throne.  After  1830  the  emancipa- 
tion of  individualism  had  only  itself  to  fear.  It  could 
develop  unchecked  on  the  stage  and  in  the  press.  But 

1  See  Lanson,  Litterature  fran9aise,  p.  916,  for  further  titles,  and 
also  Brunetiere,  Etudes  critiques,  i.  279. 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  155 

its  unchallenged  rule  was  very  brief ;  indeed,  as  a  sys- 
tem, it  passed  into  history  with  the  fiasco  of  Hugo's 
"  Burgraves  "  in  1843.  Yet  it  has  never  ceased  to  be  an 
all-pervading  influence  in  the  whole  period  that  follows. 
It  has  fostered  and  almost  transformed  the  study  of 
history ;  it  is  the  inspiration  of  the  modern  novel  of 
whatever  shibboleth.1 

A  school  implies  a  master  and  rules  or  principles ; 
but  it  is  hard  to  say  who  was  the  master  or  what  were 
the  rules  of  this  group  of  writers  who  asserted  so  vig- 
orous a  life  and  enjoyed  so  brief  a  triumph.  Hugo  is 
greatest  among  them  ;  but  he  is  not  master,  for  the 
very  essence  of  the  movement  lies  in  the  free  scope 
that  it  claims  for  the  development  of  individual- 
ity in  the  assertion  of  the  rights  of  imagination,  re- 
stricted and  confined  since  Malherbe's  day.  Their  early 
strength,  the  bond  of  their  cohesion,  lay  in  the  protest 
against  what  they  thought  the  mummeries  of  Classi- 
cism, and  men  might  share  this  who  shared  nothing 
else.  Hence  we  find  sculptors  and  painters  among 
the  foremost  to  "respond  to  Hernani's  horn,"  for 
they  felt  that  dramatic  liberty  involved  their  own. 
They  could  be  rallied  for  any  attack  on  artistic 
conventions.  The  very  first  verse  of  "  Hernani " 
was  meant  and  taken  as  a  challenge  to  metrical 
precedent;  and  repeated  contemptuous  allusions  to 
old  age  in  the  same  piece  voiced  a  like  sentiment. 
The  iconoclasts  were  as  extreme  as  the  conservatives. 
Shouts  of  "  Down  with  Eacine !  *  enlivened  the  the- 
atres; while  Gautier,  with  a  band  of  long-haired, 
youthful  enthusiasts,  danced  a  saraband  around  the 

1  See  Bruuetiere,  £poques  du  theatre  francais,  340,  and  Zola, 
Romanciers  naturalistes,  p.  376,  who  complains,  there  and  elsewhere, 
that  he  cannot  get  his  feet  out  of  the  Romantic  snare. 


156  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

statue  of  that  courtly  tragedian  before  the  faces  of  a 
shocked  bourgeoisie. 

Behind  this  impatience  of  control,  the  unreasoning 
self-assertion  of  youth  conscious  of  its  strength  and 
over-sanguine  of  its  powers,  there  was  a  calmer  and 
more  reasoning  desire  for  a  freer  expression  of  emotion 
and  art,  especially  in  lyric  and  dramatic  poetry.  It  was, 
then,  in  the  nature  of  the  movement  that  each  genius 
should  develop  independently.  Hugo,  the  greatest  of 
them,  will  demand  a  place  apart.  Others,  like  Stend- 
hal, appear  more  fitly  among  the  precursors  of  Natural- 
ism; others,  like  Sainte-Beuve,  among  the  critics  of 
the  century.  The  schoolr4fxone  may  call  it  so,  had 
its  nucleus  in  Charles  $"odier)(l  783-1 844),  a  fanciful 
and  romantic  sentimentalist,  with  whom  were  associ- 
ated first  De  Vigny  and  the  Deschamp  brothers,  then 
Lamartine,  Hugo,  and  Sainte-Beuve,  who  has  described 
this  "  Cdnacle, "  for  so  they  called  themselves,  as 
"  Eoyalists  by  birth,  Christians  by  convenance  and  a 
vague  sentimentality. "  Their  first  organ  was  the 
"  Muse  franchise ; "  and  their  aim  was  to  nurse  and 
rouse  the  old  monarchical  spirit,  the  spirit  of  mystery 
and  spiritual  submission,  as  we  find  it  voiced  in  La- 
martine's  *  Lac  "  and  "  Crucifix, "  in  De  Vigny 's  "  Eloa  " 
and  "  Moi'se, "  and  in  Hugo's  early  "Odes  and 
Ballads. " 

In  form,  however,  these  men  soon  came  to  demand 
the  fullest  independence.  They  avoided  imitation 
even  of  the  most  admirable  work ;  they  would  not  put 
their  new  wine  into  old  bottles.  And  presently,  in 
the  exigencies  of  controversy,  they  began  to  claim 
that  even  in  their  own  day  the  Classicists  had  not 
represented  the  people,  —  a  view  that  had  far-reaching 
results;  for  this  democratic  impulse,  once  stirred, 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  157 

turned  the  school  slowly  but  surely  from  legitimacy 
to  liberalism,  from  t.hp  "Bourbons  and  the  Orleanists  to 
the.  Revolution  and  Napoleon.  Lamartine  sings  of 
universal  emancipation;  Hugo,  of  the  Vendome  Col- 
umn.1 These  wider  sympathies  won  them  a  wider 
popularity,  and  drew  to  them,  even  before  the  Revo- 
lution of  July,  the  valuable  alliance  of  De  Musset, 
Me'rime'e,  and  the  elder  Dumas;  and  to  these  were 
added  a  little  later  the  distinguished  names  of  Gautier 
and  Ge'rard  de  Nerval.  • 

The  Romantic  movement  owed  much  to  England, 
more  nxobably  to  Germany,  most  of  all  in  its  ideas  to 
De  S%^  in  its  sepheMcs  to  Chaj^ajikriand,  in  whom 
all  united  to  admir%*"tne  incomparable  artist.  Hugo, 
at  fourteen,  resolves  to  be  "  Chateaubriand  or  noth- 
ing. " 2  So  far  as  Romanticism  is  the  declaration 
of  literary.  Jndiy idualism^  of  classical 

dogmatism,  it  is  in  large  measure  the  result  of 
"  L'Allemagne ;  "  but  from  its^positive  side,  in  its 
reassertion  of  the  rights  of  im^gniatron,  it  is  far  more 
the  revival  of  the  emotions  of  Christianity  in  a  society 
whose  fearful  experiences  had  inspired  a  will  to  be- 
lieve without  altogether  satisfying  its  reason.  Chris- 
tianity to  these  Romanticists  is  not  the  robust  faith  of 
Bossuet,  but  the  lassitude  of  men  weary  of  negation, 
seeking  food  for  a  re-aroused  spiritual  nature.  To 
this  mental  state  the  ^Genius  of  Christianity  "  was  a 
revelation  of  beauty  and  art.  "  The  cross  raised  by 
Chateaubriand  over  every  avenue  of  human  intelli- 
gence, "  to  borrow  Hugo's  phrase,  cast  its  shadow  over 
the  "  Odes  and  Ballads, "  which  palpitate  with  a  medi- 

1  Contrast,  in  the  "Odes  et  Ballades,"  book  i.  11  and  ii.  4  with  iii 
3,  5,  6,  7. 

2  V.  Hugo  raconte',  ii.  106  (July  10,  1816). 


158  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

seval  faith ;  it  inspires  the  spiritualism  of  Lamartine 
and  the  young  De  Vigny;  and  if  De  Musset  seems 
rather  to  echo  the  eighteenth  century,  it  is  no  longer 
with  the  confident  sneer  of  Voltaire. 

This  spiritualism  combined  with  that  individualism 
to  foster  a  literary  subjectivity ;  and  to  this  also  De 
Stael  and  Chateaubriand  had  pointed  the  way.  Now, 
any  attempt  "  to  realize  beauty  by  the  expression  of 
character, "  unless  it  is  upborne,  as  in  Hugo,  by  colos- 
sal egoism,  is  apt  to  become  introspectively  morbid, 
melancholy,  pessimistic,  loving  best,  like  Coleridge's 
Genevieve,  "  the  songs  that  make  her  grieve, "  and  so 
in  sharp  contrast  to  the  objective  optimistic  calm  of 
the  Classicists.  There  is  a  tendency  to  flee  from  the 
grievousness  of  life  to  the  sentimental  contemplation  of 
Nature,  after  the  manner  of  Rousseau  and  Bernardin, 
to  seek  solitude  where  Classicism  had  sought  life. 
Hence  these  writers  nurse  their  emotions  on  the  medi- 
aeval Christian  past,  while  Greece  and  Eome  had  been 
more  sympathetic  to  the  School  of  1660  and  to  the 
eighteenth  century.  But  in  substituting  national  tra- 
ditions and  Christian  legends  for  the  ancient  and  pa- 
gan ones,  the  Romanticists  first  brought  literature  in 
touch  with  the  masses  of  the  people. 

Such  are  the  general  characteristics  of  Romanticism  ; 
but  no  writer  reflects  all  its  phases,  nor  were  all 
equally  imbued  with  its  spirit.  This  finds  its  most 
natural  expression  in  lyric  poetry,  which  it  is  well  to 
study  before  considering  the  effect  of  Romanticism  on 
the  drama  and  fiction. 

First  in  time  among  the  poets  are  Be'ranger,  who 
cannot  be  reckoned  as  in  full  sympathy  with  the 
movement,  and  Lamartine,  who  drew  away  from  it 
after  his  early  successes.  These  may  serve  to  intro- 


THE  ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  159 

duce  an  attempt  f-  >  show  the  evolution  of  Romantic 
poetry  as  it  apr  ars  in  the  verses  of  De  Musset,  De 
Vigny,  and  Gautier.  Be'ranger,  in  a  vast  number  of 
songs  that  deal  with  love,  wine,  politics,  and  espe- 
cially with  Napoleon,  whose  legend  he  did  much  to 
establish,  continues  the  song-writers  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  though  he  is  far  more  cleanly  and  much  more 
popular.  It  is  as  impossible  for  him  as  for  them  to 
be  wholly  serious.  A  spice  of  Gallic  mockery  lurks 
even  in  his  songs  of  patriotism  and  democracy,  though 
he  strikes  here  his  deepest  and  most  original  notes.1 
Perhaps  Be'ranger  was  too  democratic  in  his  nature 
and  convictions  to  develop  a  truly  independent  lyric 
individuality.  His  belief  in  the  wisdom  of  the  ma- 
jority is  almost  a  creed ;  but  this  insured  his  accept- 
ance by  the  multitude.  He  reflects  faithfully  the 
temper  of  the  great  middle  classes  ;  and  these  maintain 
his  popularity  to-day  because  they  find  in  his  verses 
the  completest  echo  of  their  own  Voltairianism,  a  hero- 
worship  spiced  with  Hague,  and  love  of  good-cheer, 
while  they  are  not  offended,  as  more  cultured  men 
might  be,  at  his  mannerisms  of  language  and  style.  _ 
Lamartine,  on  the  other  hand,  is  pre-eminently .an 
aristocrat  both  by  birth  and  instinct.2  He,  too,  was 
no  thorough-going  Eomanticist,  but  he  made  great  and 

1  E.  g.,  Le  Vieux  drapeau,  La  Bonne  vieille,  L'Alliance  des 
penples.  See  Sainte-Beuve,  Portraits  contemporains,  i.  60. 

»  Born  1 790 ;  died  1 869.  His  principal  volumes  are  —  Poetry :  Medi- 
tations, 1820;  Nonvelles  meditations,  1823  ;  Harmonies  poetiques  et 
religieuses,  1830;  Jocelyn,  1 836 ;  La  Chute  d'un  ange,  1838;  Kecueille- 
ments  poetiques,  1839.  Prose  :  Voyage  en  Orient,  1835;  Histoire  des 
Girondins,  1847;  Graziella,  1852. 

Criticism  :  Sainte-Beuve,  Portraits  contemporains,  i.  190 ;  Brunetiere, 
Poe'sie  lyrique,  i.  107,  and  Histoire  et  litte'rature,  iii.  239;  Fagnet, 
xix.  siecle,  p.  73  ;  Rod,  Lamartine  (Classiques  populaires) ;  Descharnel, 
Lamartine ;  Lacretelle,  Lamartine  et  ses  amis. 


160  MODERN   FRENCH    i-ITE  MATURE. 

essential  contributions  to  the  lyi  ition  of  that 

school.      He  was  of  old  Roy<;;  ily,  and  had  the 

education  of  a  Catholic  noble.  Afti  i  the  Restoration 
he  entered  the  army,  which  he  soon  exchanged  for 
the  diplomatic  service,  though  not  until  he  had  pub- 
lished the  "  Meditations,  "  —  verses  that  accorded  less 
with  the  profession  of  arms  than  with  the  weary  tem- 
per of  this  time  of  exhaustion,  the  to-morrow  of  Water- 
loo. Its  success  showed  how  completely  it  expressed 
the  state  of  mind  of  cultured  France.  Forty -live  tii^u- 
sand  copies  were  sold  in  less  than  four  years.  That 
Lamartine  was  happily  married  in  1822,  and  busied 
with  diplomacy  till  1830,  seemed  rather  to  foster  than 
check  his  sentimental  melancholy.  After  the  Eevolu- 
tion  of  July,  he  made  a  journey  to  the  Orient,  and 
returned  in  1833  to  take  an  active  part  in  politics, 
where  his  oratory  earned  him  distinction,  and  his  gen- 
erous though  unpractical  patriotism  won  him  esteem. 
In  1848  he  withdrew  from  the  Eepublic,  of  which  he 
had  been  the  quickly  discredited  chief,  and  passed  his 
last  years  in  indigence,  relieved  toward  the  close  by 
the  generosity  of  the  Imperial  government  which  he 
had  opposed. 

Lamartine 's  poetry  belongs  almost  wholly  to  the 
early  period,  and  is,  as  he  himself  says,  a  direct  result 
of  the  study  of  De  Stael,  to  whom  he  owed  more  than 
any  other  Romanticist.  It  is  usually  lyric  in  form, 
almost  always  so  in  sentiment.  It  deals  with  the 
relations  of  man  to  an  idealized  Nature  rather  than  to 
his  fellow-men.  Indeed,  Lamartine  has  but  one  note, 
and  that  not  an  inspiring  one.  His  verses  preserve  much 
of  the  verbal  mannerisms  of  the  former  generation; 
they  flow  in  an  ever-broadening  and  somewhat  shallow 
stream,  from  the  "  Meditations"  to  the  diffuse  epic 


/£>  3     to    l^c-     i~*  -  •  *-«- 

THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  161 

parables  of  "  Jocelyn  "  and  the  "  Angel's  Fall.  "  It  is 
hard  for  the  modern  reader  to  realize,  still  harder  to 
comprehend,  the  ardent  admiration  that  hailed  each 
succeeding  volume;  for,  great  as  is  the  bulk  of  his 
verse,  his  message  was  all  in  his  first  poems,  and 
gained  nothing  by  repetition.  He  was  a  noble-minded 
but  melancholy  and  somewhat  sickly  idealist,  nursed 
in  the  school  of  Kousseau,  who  in  early  life  had  no 
crosses  to  stir  his  vigor ;  and  when  these  came  in  later 
years,  they  discovered  none  to  stir.  So  at  his  best 
"  he  touches  but  does  not  penetrate  the  heart, "  and  at 
its  worst  his  sentimentality  is  nauseating.  He  ac- 
knowledges himself  "  incapable  of  the  exacting  labor 
of  the  file  and  of  criticism ;  "  so,  while  his  verses  flow 
as  naturally  as  the  gentle  rain  from  heaven,  their  ethe- 
real mushiness  drowns  the  germs  of  healthy  realistic 
action.  True  passion  never  descended  to  such  depths 
as  "  My  letter  is  not  ink,  but  written  tears, "  or  "  These 
verses  fell  from  my  pen  like  drops  of  evening  dew. " 
Eeal  suffering  has  a  different  throb  from  the  rhythmic 
pulsation  of  his  "  Laments, "  and  his  smug  "  Medita- 
tions "  provoke  in  our  day  more  exasperation  than 
sympathy. 

But  in  1820  the  French  people  were  weary  and 
heart-sick,  and  none  appealed  to  them  as  diditamartirie. 
He  brought  home  to  the  heart  of  cultured  France'  the 
hazy  religiosity  of  Chateaubriand  and  the  equally  hazy 
Nature- worship  of  Eousseau ;  and  while  there  was  in 
the  public  this  mood  to  comprehend  him,  Lamartine's 
popularity  was  secure.  But  when  this  mood  yielded 
to  a  more  energetic  spirit,  the  poet  soon  sank  to  the 
place  of  a  writer  whom  few  read,  though  all  conven- 
tionally admire.  After  the  collapse  of  his  political 
fortunes,  he  seems  to  have  felt,  what  others  had  felt 

11 


162  MODERN   FRENCH    LITERATURE. 

long  before,  that  his  poetic  vein  was  worked  out.  And 
his  later  work  suffered  from  the  speed  with  which  he 
was  constrained  to  produce  it.  "  Graziella  "  and  other 
short  tales  are  graceful,  but  weak ;  the  "  Voyage  en 
Orient  "  is  too  rhetorical,  and  the  "  History  of  the 
Girondins  "  is  both  declamatory  and  demagogic.  Yet 
Lamartine  still  merits  serious  study,  less  for  what  he 
is  to  any  group  of  readers  to-day  than  for  what  he  was 
to  a  former  generation,  —  the  most  complete  reflection 
of  their  sentiments  and  aspirations. 

A  sturdier  man  in  every  way,  and  in  his  earlier 
poetic  period  more  ip.  sympathy  with  the  spirit  of 
Romanticism,  was  I)e  Vigny, a  distinguished  not  only 
in  poetry  but  also  in  the  drama  and  in  fiction.  He  was 
of  a  military  family,  and,  like  Lamartine,  connected 
with  the  army  from  1815  to  1827,  — twelve  years  of 
piping  peace  that  seem  to  have  disgusted  him  with 
the  profession.  He  was  already  an  author  of  good 
report,  and  emancipated  from  material  cares  by  a 
wealthy  marriage,  when  he  published  his  first  volume 
of  poems,  two  years  after  Lamartine 's  "  Meditations. " 
This  book  is  valuable  intrinsically,  but  its  importance 
to  the  evolution  of  French  poetry  lies  in  three  poems, 
— "  La  Neige,  *  which  is  the  first  grandiose  poetic 
evocation  of  the  middle  ages,  and  "  Le  Cor, "  written 
at  Roncesvalles  during  the  Spanish  war  (1823),  which, 
with  "  Moise, "  is  the  first  attempt  in  French  to  treat 
philosophic  subjects  in  epic  and  dramatic  form. 

1  Born  1799 ;  died  1863.  Poetry :  Poemes,  1822 ;  Poemes  antiques  et 
modernes,  1826 ;  Les  Destinees,  1864.  Prose  :  Cinq-Mars,  1826 ;  Stello, 
1832  ;  Servitude  et  grandeur  militaires,  1835  ;  Journal  d'un  poete,  1867. 

Criticism :  Bruneticre,  Poe'sie  lyrique,  ii.  3 ;  Litte'rature  contem- 
poraine,  31  ;  Faguet,  xix.  siecle,  124;  Paleologue,  De  Vigny  (Grands 
ecrivains  fran9ais) ;  Dorison,  De  Vigny,  poete  philosophe,  and  De 
Vigny  et  la  poesie  politique ;  Sainte-Beuve,  Portraits  contemporains, 
i.  326,  and  Nouveaux  lundis,  vi. 


THE  KOMANTIC   SCHOOL.  163 

The  epic  "  Eloa, "  that  followed  in  1824,  was  more 
in  the  tone  of  Lamartine,  and  doubtless  served  as  a 
model  for  his  "Angel's  Fall."  Here  the  heroine,  a 
sister  of  the  angels,  born  of  a  tear  of  the  Saviour,  falls 
from  her  native  grace  by  a  sympathy  so  universal  as 
to  embrace  even  the  Spirit  of  Evil.  The  style  of  this 
poem,  as  of  the  earlier  "  Moi'se  "  and  "  Le  Deluge, " 
shows  the  influence  of  the  young  Hugo,  but  reacted 
with  greater  power  on  that  poet's  later  manner;  while 
"  Dolorida, "  another  short  narrative  in  verse,  inspired, 
like  "  Le  Cor, "  by  his  Spanish  campaign,  seems  to 
have  left  its  impress  on  De  Musset's  youthful 
"  Contes  d'Espagne  et  d'ltalie.  " 

The  Eevolution  of  1830  produced  essential  changes 
in  De  Vigny's  genius;  and  his  small  posthumous  vol- 
ume, "  Les  Destinies, "  reveals  him  at  the  height  of 
his  power  as  a  lyric  pessimist  and  philosophic  poet 
who  felt  his  function  to  be  "  to  represent  thoughts, 
epic,  philosophic,  dramatic. "  So,  in  a  sense,  he 
became  a  "  Symbolist, "  from  whom  the  school  of  that 
name  have  learned  much  and  might  learn  more.  Espe- 
cially in  "  Le  Mont  des  oliviers  "  and  "  La  Maison  du 
berger, "  there  is  a  purposeful  objectivity,  a  grappling 
with  the  problems  of  life,  as  they  present  themselves, 
old  foes  with  new  faces,  to  our  century,  more  vigorous 
than  would  have  been  looked  for  in  the  author  of 
"  Eloa. "  But  the  general  note  of  these  "  Philosophic 
Poems  "  is  gloomy  skepticism,  with  desperate  exhorta- 
tions to  self-reliance,  since  there  is  nothing  else  on 
which  to  rely. 

At  first  his  changed  mood  found  expression  in  the 
drama  and  in  fiction,  that  will  claim  our  attention  pres- 
ently. After  1835  he  published  nothing,  wrapping 
his  pessimism  in  a  stern  silence,  taking  for  himself 


164  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

the  rule  of  "  Stello  "  to  separate  the  poetic  from  the 
political  life,  since  "  the  application  of  ideas  to  things 
is  but  time  lost  for  the  creation  of  thoughts.  " 

This  self-contained  calm  contrasts  strangely  with  the 
eager  utterance  of  the  inner  circle  of  the  Eomanticists. 
With  him,  as  with  his  Chatterton,  "  continual  revery 
killed  action. " J  He  has  been  said  thus  to  occupy  a 
middle  ground  between  De  Musset  and  Che'nier ;  but 
his  thoughtfulness,  somewhat  chilling  at  times,  sug- 
gests rather  Madame  de  Stael,  and  artistically  he  has 
much  in  common  with  Chateaubriand,  though  he  is 
more  coldly  impersonal  and  probably  much  more  sin- 
cere in  his  pessimism,  — •  if  indeed  the  morbid  senti- 
ment of  "  Eend  "  should  be  dignified  with  the  name  of 
pessimism  at  all. 

If  we  may  trust  De  Vigny's  "  Journal "  and  his 
posthumous  poems,  Nature  seemed  to  him  "  a  tomb, " 
where  it  was  the  part  of  wisdom  "  to  respond  with  a 
cold  silence  to  the  eternal  silence  of  God.  "  2  "  Peaceful 
despair  is  true  wisdom, "  he  says  elsewhere.  "  Good 
is  always  mixed  with  evil;  evil  alone  is  pure  and 
unmixed. "  "  Extreme  good  is  ill,  extreme  ill  never 
good ;  "  while  "  hope  is  the  source  of  all  cowardice.  " 
So  broods  this  self -tormentor,  who  "  loves  the  majesty  of 
human  sufferings, " — a  verse  that  he  declares  to  be  "  the 
sense  of  all  his  philosophic  poems. "  To  him  the  real 
is  less  real  than  the  symbol,  the  seen  than  the  unseen. 
"  The  dream  is  as  dear  to  the  thinker  as  all  that  he 
loves  in  the  actual  world,  and  more  terrible  than  all 

1  Curiously  enough,  unhappy  love,  the  very  cause  of  the  fecundity 
of  Lamartine  and  De  Musset,  was  the  reason  of  his  silence..  See 
Pale'ologue,  pp.  89-105. 

2  Le  juste  opposera  le  dedain  a  1'absence, 
Et  ne  repondra  plus  que  par  un  froid  silence 
Au  silence  eternel  de  la  divinite. 


)  ST  V     ytS\       j-o    ..    \  Co 
THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  165 

that  he  fears. "  His  very  genius  seems  to  him  a  fatal 
gift;  glory  only  "immortalizes  misfortune."  His 
Joshua  is  "pensive  and  pale,"  because  he  is  God's 
elect;  his  Moses,  "  mighty  and  solitary.  "  If  at  times, 
under  the  cruel  deceptions  of  love,  he  seemed  to  lose 
faith  in  his  idealism,  his  pessimism  remained  always 
noble,  restrained,  sympathetic,  manifesting  itself  not 
in  appeals  for  condolence  but  in  pitying  care  of  all 
who  were  near  and  dear  to  him.  But  this  lofty  poetry, 
interpenetrated  with  the  stern  despair  of  pessimistic 
idealism,  will  always  be  unintelligible  to  the  many. 
As  a  poet,  De  Vigny  appeals  to  the  chosen  few  alone. 
In  his  dramas  his  genius  is  more  emancipated  from 
himself;  in  his  novels,  most  of  all.  It  is  by  these 
that  he  is  most  widely  known,  and  by  these  that  he 
exercised  the  greatest  influence  on  the  literary  life  of 
his  generation.  But  his  philosophic  poems  will  be 
his  monument,  cere  perennius,  when  all  else  shall  be 
forgotten. 

Lamartine  and  the  young  De  Vigny  stand  on  the 
threshold  of  Romanticism.  With  De  Musset  we  are 
in  its  full  efflorescence.  No  poet  ever  announced  his 
advent  with  more  of  the  genial  sense  of  youth  than  he. 
"  He  makes  his  entry  with  a  bright  song  on  his  lips, 
spring  on  his  cheeks,  his  eye  candid  and  proud,  smil- 
ing at  existence,  the  elect  of  genius  and  affianced  to 
love.  "  l  His  is  the  poetry  of  Nature,  —  that  gushing  of 
simple  passion  that  mocks  all  rule  and  "  sings  of  sum- 
mer in  full-throated  ease, "  or  quivers  with  the  pain  of 
his  heart's  reopening  wounds.  But  to  this  rich  blos- 
soming of  his  spring-time  there  came  an  early  autumn 
and  a  long  winter.  At  thirty  De  Musset  was  already 
an  old  man  seeking  in  artificial  stimuli  the  fountain 
1  Pellissier,  Mouvement  litteraire  ail  xix.  siecle. 


166  MODEKN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

of  a  youth  that  would  not  spring  again.  The  zeal  of 
his  house  had  eaten  him  up;  his  passion  had  burned 
itself  out  and  burned  out  his  heart  with  it.  He  had 
done  his  work;  it  mattered  little  to  literature  or  to 
him  whether  the  curtain  had  fallen  on  his  life's  drama 
in  1841  or  in  1857. 

A  Parisian,  born  in  181 O,1  of  noble  and  cultured 
family,  he  was  a  most  precocious  and  excitable  child 
and  a  wayward  youth.  He  printed  his  first  volume  in 
1829,  and  his  last  of  note  in  1841.  During  this  brief 
interval  he  produced  many  lyrics  of  the  highest  value, 
dramatic  work  of  quite  peculiar  charm,  and  stories 
worthy  to  rank  with  the  best  of  that  brilliant  decade. 
More  than  any  of  his  fellows,  he  was  a  poet  by  inspi- 
ration, not  by  art.  He  sang  "  because  he  must ;  "  he 
was  a  law  to  himself.  His  sportive  genius  even  went 
out  of  its  way  to  ridicule  or  to  offend  "  the  rhyming 
school  that  cares  only  for  form."  It  would  seek,  or 
at  least  it  would  not  shun,  irregularities,  solecisms, 
and  venturesome  similes,  of  which  the  famous  com- 
parison of  the  moon  to  the  dot  on  an  i  is  only  an 
easily  quotable  example. 

In  this,  as  in  much  else,  "  De  Musset  was  a  child 

1  Died  1857.  Chronology  of  the  principal  works  —  Poetry:  Contes 
d'Espagne  et  d'ltalie,  1830;  Rolla,  1833;  Les  Nuits,  1835M837.  Dra- 
mas :  Caprices  de  Marianne,  1833  ;  Lorenzaccio,  Fantasio,  On  ne  badine 
pas  avec  I'amour,  1 834  ;  Le  Chandelier,  1 835  ;  II  ne  f aut  jurer  de  rien, 
1836.  Fiction:  Confession  d'un  jeune  homme  du  siecle,  1836;  Contes, 
1837-1844;  La  Mouche,  1853.  The  sixteen  years,  1841-1857,  show 
two  or  three  lyrics  of  the  first  rank,  several  good  dramas  and  stories, 
but  nothing  that  marks  growth. 

Criticism:  Brunetiere,  Poesie  lyrique,  i.  257,  and  Fjpoques  dn 
theatre  francais,  349;  Faguet,  xix.  siecle,  259;  Barine,  De  Musset 
(Grands  ecrivains  francais);  Paul  Lindau,  Alfred  de  Musset  (Berlin, 
1876);  Palgrave,  Oxford  Essays;  Sainte-Beuve,  Portraits  contem- 
porains,  i.  397. 


THE   ROMANTIC    SCHOOL.  167 

all  his  life,  and  a  spoiled  child."  Extreme  in  all 
things,  he  would  work  excessively,  only  to  yield  more 
completely  to  utter  idleness  and  his  lower  nature. 
Like  Eousseau,  and  all  who  have  nursed  themselves 
in  hypersensitiveness,  he  suffered  acutely  from  self- 
deception  and  disillusionment.  So,  in  the  spirit  of 
Eornantic  devotion,  he  accompanied  George  Sand  to 
Italy  (1834),  only  to  be  tortured  by  an  estrangement 
(1835)  that  lay  in  the  nature  of  things  and  cost  her 
few  pangs,  while  it  marks  the  cardinal  point  in  his 
career.1  Here  lay  his  power,  but  also  his  weakness. 
"  Strike  the  heart, "  he  said ;  "  genius  lies  there.  "  To 
bare  his  heart,  to  display  his  emotions,  is  with  him  in- 
stinct rather  than  design.  Hence  his  power  of  inven- 
tion is  not  strong.  He  was  no  thinker,  like  De  Vigny  ; 
but  he  painted  wonderfully  what  he  had  felt  subjec- 
tively, and  what  he  felt  supremely  was  the  hollow 
worthlessness  of  the  only  love  he  knew.  Love  and 
passion  were  the  Alpha  and  Omega  of  his  life.  In  his 
"  Confession  "  he  says :  "  I  did  not  conceive  that  one 
could  do  anything  but  love. "  If,  now,  such  a  nature 
is  possessed  by  egoistical  skepticism,  genius  will  not 
save  the  man,  though  it  may  the  work.  Faust's 
"  eternal  womanly  "  has  no  power  to  draw  such  souls 
upward  and  on.  It  drew  De  Musset,  as  it  has  others 
whom  we  shall  meet,  to  intellectual  and  moral  decay, 
of  which  the  successive  steps  can  be  traced  in  his 
dramas  and  his  lyrics. 

His  first  work,  "  Les  Contes  d'Espagne  et  d'ltalie," 
shows  reckless  daring  in  the  choice  of  brutal  subjects 
of  crime  and  debauchery,  quite  in  the  spirit  of  Le  Sage, 

1  She  made  it  the  subject  of  a  novel,  "  Elle  et  lui,"  which  provoked 
"Lui  et  elle,"  an  indignant  reply,  from  De  Musset's  brother  Paul 
The  matter  is  fully  and  impartially  treated  by  Barine,  pp.  57-90. 


168  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

with  much  freshness  and  brio,  and  a  dash  of  dandified 
impertinence  in  verses  that  mocked  the  foibles  of  the 
older  Eomanticists,  and  suggested  to  his  contempora- 
ries the  Byron  of  "  Don  Juan.  *  But  he  repelled  the 
flattering  comparison.  "  My  glass  is  not  large,  but  I 
drink  from  my  own, "  he  said.  However,  he  presently 
abandoned  this  style  for  the  more  subjective  strain  of 
"  Les  Voeux  ste'riles  "  and  "  Eaphael, "  and  for  the  decla- 
mation of  "  Namouna  "  and  "  Rolla,  "  both  very  eloquent 
at  times,  though  fundamentally  immature.  Already 
he  is  playing  with  the  passionate  fire  that,  after  the 
separation  from  George  Sand,  will  fill  his  heart  with 
the  throbbing  passion  of  "  Les  Nuits, "  which,  with 
the  "  Ode  to  Malibran  "  and  the  "  Letter  to  Lamar- 
tine "  (1836),  mark  the  highest  point  of  his  lyric 
development,  —  a  time  of  sad  but  in  the  main  sober 
resignation,  that  had  overcome  the  spirit  of  revolt,  and 
had  not  yet  yielded  to  the  lethargy  of  debauchery. 

Even  his  second  volume  had  shown  the  overflowing 
confidence  of  youth  a  little  checked  by  experience. 
In  "  Rolla, "  one  of  the  strongest  and  most  depressing 
of  all  his  poems,  the  skeptic  regrets  the  faith  he  has 
lost  the  power  to  regain,  and  realizes  in  lucid  flashes 
the  desolate  emptiness  of  his  own  heart.  And  the 
same  note  that  has  here  a  brazen  ring  sounds  with 
more  subdued  sadness  in  the  four  "  Nuits  "  and  in 
"  Espoir  en  Dieu. "  l  For  De  Musset  had  not  the  cour- 
age to  follow  his  aspirations.  Seeds  of  disease,  fos- 
tered by  a  wild  and  reckless  life,  sapped  his  will  even 
while  his  genius  still  shone  bright.  But  if  his  lyric 
production  grows  more  sparing  and  in  form  less 
Romantic,  occasional  outbursts,  such  as  "  Le  Rhin 
allemand, "  show  that  at  times  he  could  still  gather 

l  "Rolla"  is  dated  1833  ;  the  "Nuits,"  1833  to  1837  ;  "Espoir,"  1838. 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  169 

up  all  his  powers.  Yet,  in  the  next  years,  both  the 
lyric  and  the  drama  were  laid  aside  for  prose  fiction, 
to  which  we  shall  recur  presently.  He  resumed  the 
drama,  in  1845,  with  the  charming  "  II  faut  qu'une 
porte  soit  ouverte  ou  fermee ; "  but  the  comedies  that 
followed  were  far  below  his  earlier  standard.  His 
lyric  work  had  now  almost  wholly  ceased,  and  one 
is  more  than  once  tempted  to  wish  it  had  ceased 
altogether. 1 

It  was  of  the  nature  of  Komanticism  to  encourage 
the  most  varied  individualization.  It  might  be  hard 
to  find  in  literature  a  more  radical  divergence  than 
that  of  De  Musset  and  Gautier;  for  just  as  one  was, 
in  Leconte  de  Lisle 's  contemptuous  phrase,  the  "  show- 
man "  of  his  heart's  emotion,  so  the  other  was  a  con- 
scious artist,  objective  in  aesthetics  as  in  morals, 
judging  his  work  from  the  intellectual  side,  enjoying 
his  art  for  its  own  sake.  It  is  more  true  of  Gautier 
than  of  any  considerable  French  poet,  that  he  seems  to 
write  for  the  sake  of  writing,  for  the  joy  that  he  finds  ^*-^ 
in  the  art  of  manipulating  the  language. 

Born  in  Provence,  Gautier  2  was  educated  at  Paris,   ^ 

1  The  chronology  of  the  "Contes"  is:  Emmeline,  1837;  Deux  mat- 
tresses, Fre'deric  et  Bernerette,  Filsdu  Titien,  Margot,  1838  ;  Croisilles 
(his  best),   1839;  Merle  blanc,  1842;  Mimi   Pinson,  1843;  Pierre  et 
Camille,  1844  ;  La  Mouche,  1853. 

2  Born    1811;  died  1872.    Poetry:  Poesies,  1830;  Albertus,  1832; 
Come'die  de  la  mort,  1838 ;  £maux  et  camees,  1853.    Fiction :  Les  Jeunes 
France,  1833  ;  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin,  1835  ;  Fortunio,  1838 ;  Roman 
de  la  momie,    1856;    Capitaiue   Fracasse,    1861-1863;    Spirite,  1866. 
Travel:  Tra  los  montes,  1 843  ;  Zigzags,  1 845 ;  Italia,  1852;  Constanti- 
nople, 1854;    Loin  de  Paris,  1864;  Quand  on  voyage,   1865;   Russie, 
1866;  L'Orient,  1876.     Criticism  :  Les  Grotesques,  1844  ;  Histoire  du 
romantisme  (written  in  and  after  1830). 

See  Du  Camp,  The'ophile  Gautier;  Baudelaire,  CEuvres,  iii.  151  ; 
Brunetiere,  Poesie  lyrique,  ii.  41,  and  the  literature  there  cited. 


170  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

and  at  first  gave  himself  to  painting,  cultivating  a 
literary  taste  by  much  reading,  especially  in  the  rich 
literature  of  the  sixteenth  century,  in  Marot  and  the 
Pleiad,  —  a  training  to  which  Sainte-Beuve  attributed 
the  sureness  of  his  metrical  touch.  He  was  led  by 
these  studies  to  write  critical  essays  that  attracted 
some  attention;  but  his  literary  advent  dates  from 
1830,  when  his  first  volume  appeared  in  the  midst  of 
a  political  revolution.  Although  his  verses  won  him 
the  praise  of  Hugo,  and  admission  to  the  Cdnacle,  yet 
his  work  remained  chiefly  critical.  He  made  him- 
self the  centre  of  a  school  of  ultra  Romanticists,  the 
flamboyants,  as  they  were  wont  to  call  themselves, 
who  with  long  hair  and  flaring  waistcoats  delighted 
to  provoke  the  impotent  rage  of  the  grisdtres  and  per- 
ruques,  the  greybeards  and  periwigs,  as  they  called  the 
belated  adherents  of  Classicism.  Under  his  leadership 
this  band  of  artists,  musicians,  and  struggling  writers 
fought  the  battles  of  emancipation  in  more  than  one 
Parisian  theatre  with  an  enthusiasm  of  which  he  has 
left  a  delightfully  humorous  account  in  his  so-called 
"  Histoire  du  Romantisme.  " 

Presently  this  battle  ceased  for  lack  of  combatants ; 
and  the  irony  of  fate  made  Gautier  for  a  time  secre- 
tary to  the  novelist  Balzac,  a  post  that  must  have 
been  inconceivably  uncongenial  to  one  of  his  tastes 
and  temperament.  He  soon  abandoned  it,  but  the 
discipline  was  not  without  influence  on  his  future 
novels.  Then,  as  soon  as  better  fortune  permitted, 
Gautier  travelled  gladly  and  widely.  He  visited 
Spain,  Algeria,  Italy,  Constantinople,  and  Russia, 
and  made  from  his  experiences  books  that  are  classics 
in  the  picturesque  literature  of  the  world.  Meantime 
a  few  dramatic  attempts  had  only  reminded  him  of  the 


THE   EOMANTIC   SCHOOL.  171 

limitations  of  his  genius.  His  novels  and  tales  are 
more  interesting,  and  perhaps  most  read ;  but  it  is  his 
poetry  that  gives  him  his"  prominent  place  in  the  lit- 
erary evolution  of  the  century. 

In  all  his  work  one  is  impressed  first  and  most  by 
his  extraordinary  love  of  beauty  and  by  his  wonder- 
ful power  of  language.  Then  one  notes  that  he  is 
radically  differentiated  from  the  Romantic  and  possi- 
bly from  the  true  lyric  spirit  by  the  objective  soulless- 
ness  of  his  poetry,  by  what  Brunetiere  calls  "  its  lack  of 
personal  sensation  or  conception.  "  And  finally,  as  one 
reviews  his  work,  one  finds  him  shrinking  everywhere 
from  the  ugly,  especially  as  symbolized  in  death,  and 
yet  ever  morbidly  recurring  to  it  in  the  midst  of  the 
joys  of  sense,  —  a  thing  not  uncommon  with  our  modern 
literary  hedonists.  It  is  just  here  that  these  men  miss 
the  classical  note.  In  vain  they  emulate  the  careless 
joy  of  Theocritus  or  Anacreon.  They  cannot  efface 
their  Christian  birthmark ;  they  cannot  be  or  act  as 
though  it  were  not.  They  may  close,  as  Gautier  did 
during  the  Revolution  of  1848,  their  shutters  to  the 
world  and  its  sympathies,  until  they  see  in  a  Belgian 
landscape  only  "  an  awkward  imitation  of  Ruysdael, " 
until  form  alone  comes  to  have  meaning  and  value,  and 
the  poet  does  not  punctuate  his  manuscripts,  that  noth- 
ing may  disturb  the  worship  of  his  fetish  words ;  yet 
a  vein  of  iconoclastic  bitterness  always  mars  the  stat- 
uesque repose.  In  the  struggle  against  environment 
the  cultus  of  art  for  art  is  apt  to  become  one  of  art  for 
artificiality,  a  snare  that  even  Hugo  did  not  wholly 
avoid.  Gautier  came  to  attach  signification  not  only 
to  the  meaning  and  sound  of  words,  but  to  their  very 
vowels  and  consonants,  though  he  never  descended  to 
the  freaks  of  the  modern  Symbolists.  As  he  said 


172  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

himself  of  one  of  his  characters,  "  he  lived  so  much  in 
books  and  painting  that  he  ended  by  finding  Nature 
herself  no  longer  true ; "  and  while  he  was  dividing 
this  cuinmin-seed,  the  intrinsic  interest  of  his  sub- 
ject and  even  its  moral  bearings  became  indifferent  to 
him.  Formal  beauty  was  all  in  all. 

From  the  first,  the  precision  of  his  verse  attracted 
the  keen  ear  of  Sainte-Beuve.  "  There  is  a  man  who 
carves  in  granite, "  he  said  of  the  "  Tete  de  mort "  in 
1829.  Gautier's  first  long  poem,  "  Albertus, "  may  re- 
sist and  hardly  repay  analysis ;  but  as  a  series  of  weird, 
vivid,  fantastic  pictures,  the  orgy  at  Beelzebub's  court 
and  the  gallows-humor  of  the  close  are  quite  worthy  of 
that  sixteenth  century  from  which  he  drew  his  inspi- 
ration. This  was  a  freak  of  strong  but  morbid  im- 
agination, and  the  "  Come'die  de  la  mort, "  suggested 
perhaps  by  the  "  Ahasve'rus  "  of  Edgar  Quinet,  shows 
preoccupation  with  the  same  gloomy  subject.  In  this 
poem  of  uncanny  fascination,  life  in  death  and  death 
in  life  are  exhibited  in  a  series  of  brief  but  impressive 
pictures.  The  worm  talks  to  the  bride  who  died  on  her 
wedding-day,  and  prints  the  first  kiss  on  her  lips ;  the 
skull  of  Eaphael  tells  the  poet  of  the  fair  Fornarina ; 
Faust  has  discovered  that  living  is  loving,  and  Don 
Juan  that  virtue  is  the  solution  of  the  world's  mys- 
tery ;  Napoleon  regrets  that  he  did  not  rather  "  sport 
with  Amaryllis  in  the  shade  "  than  conquer  the  con- 
tinent. One  and  all  speak  of  lost  illusions,  but  no- 
where in  this  poem  of  death  is  there  a  hint  o£  life 
beyond  the  grave. 

Gautier  had,  however,  another  string  to  his  lyre. 
His  "  Paysages  et  interieurs  "  are  charming  pictures 
of  the  cheerful  side  of  life  and  of  natural  beauty. 
But  he  regards  nature  more  in  its  exterior  aspect  and 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  173 

less  in  its  relations  to  man  than  Lamartine  or  Eous- 
seau  would  have  done.  And  this  is  true  also  of  the 
"  fimaux  et  came'es, "  poems  as  delicate  and  as  cold  as 
their  title  suggests.  Not  even  the  toys  of  a  dead 
child  will  persuade  the  poet  to  do  more  than  paint 
with  an  infinitely  delicate  brush  a  picture  that  may 
work  its  own  way  to  the  heart. 

Never  was  poet  so  wrapped  up  in  his  art,  so  bent  on 
catching  the  outward  form,  so  indifferent  to  the  spir- 
itual meaning  of  things ;  and  his  most  zealous  disci- 
ples have  been  most  eager  to  imitate  his  limitations. 
And  yet,  in  the  vagaries  of  the  new  individualism,  it 
was  well  for  the  future  of  French  poetry  that  these 
masterpieces  of  elaborate  correctness  should  be  set 
for  an  example  before  others  who  had  that  love  of 
humanity  without  which  the  best  poetry  is  but  a 
sounding  brass  and  a  tinkling  cymbal.  That  touch  of 
Nature  was  best  represented  among  the  Eomanticists 
by  the  righteous  indignation  of  Barbier's  "  lambes, " 
—  satires  on  the  ignoble  side,  social  and  political, 
of  the  generation  that  came  to  the  front  with 
Louis  Philippe.  Eomanticism,  being  in  its  essence 
lyric,  naturally  revived  satire;  and  the  "  lambes " 
awaited  their  equal  till  Hugo's  "  Ch£timents  "  en- 
larged the  borders  and  deepened  the  bitterness  of 
poetic  wrath. 

But  though  lyric  poetry  was  the  natural  stronghold 
of  Eomanticism,  general  agreement  made  the  drama 
the  battle-ground  between  the  conservatives  and  the 
reformers.  All  the  members  of  the  Ce'nacle,  whatever 
the  bent  of  their  talent,  joined  in  this  attempt  to 
cany  the  war  into  the  heart  of  the  enemy's  country. 
Here  Classicism  was  most  strongly  intrenched ;  here 
the  old  rules  had  been  most  strictly  enforced;  here 


174  MODEEN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

the  effect  of  the  new  liberties  could  be  most  plainly 
seen;  here  the  public  could  pronounce  an  immedi- 
ate and  unmistakable  verdict;  here  alone,  at  least 
in  France,  could  literary  propagandism  be  effectually 
prosecuted. 

The  classic  stage  certainly  invited,  almost  cried  for, 
reforms  that  the  innovators  of  the  eighteenth  century 
had  not  been  able  to  secure.  In  1820  De  Rdmusat 
remarks  the  disgust  of  audiences  for  dramas  in  classic 
form.  It  seemed  to  him  "  as  though  all  means  of 
causing  emotion  had  lost  their  effect.  People  recog- 
nized them  and  were  weary  of  them. "  Some  drama- 
tists had  already  attempted,  and  some  critics,  among 
them  Lemercier  and  Stendhal,  had  preached  a  return! 
to  natural  methods,  and  preferred  Shakspere  to  Racine.  I 
There  was  indeed  little  absolutely  new  in  the  dramatic 
theories  elaborated  by  the  critics  of  the  "  Globe, "  and 
proclaimed  in  Hugo's  preface  to  "  Cromwell "  with  an 
eloquent  daring  that  found  an  echo  in  De  Vigny's  in- 
troduction to  his  translation  of  "  Othello  "  (1829).  But 
they  were  the  first  to  make  effective  the  demand  for  a 
deeper  and  fuller  study  of  character,  for  individuals 
in  place  of  types ;  they  first  announced  their  readiness 
to  exchange  the  classical  indefiniteness  of  time  and 
place,  that  befitted  the  enunciation  of  universal  truths, 
for  dramatic  illusion  in  elaborate  reproductions  of  local 
and  temporal  conditions.  But  for  this  the  historical 
drama  offered  the  best  excuse  and  opportunity.  Their 
aim  was  to  specialize  and  diversify  what  the  Classi- 
cists had  generalized.  To  do  this,  they  were  obliged 
to  extend  the  time  of  the  dramatic  action  beyond  the 
single  day  that  might  suffice  for  the  already  formed 
characters  of  Racine.  The  "  unity  of  place  "  was  even 
more  easily  abandoned,  and  "  unity  of  action  "  yielded 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL  175 

to  unity  of  interest.1  No  one  has  stated  this  better 
than  De  Vigny.  The  new  drama,  he  thinks,  should 
deal  with  long  periods  of  time,  entire  lives.  The 
characters  are  to  be  introduced  with  only  the  germs  of 
the  passions  from  which  the  tragedy  is  to  grow,  and 
destiny  is  to  be  shown  gradually  enveloping  its  vic- 
tims. All  is  to  be  as  in  life.  There  are  to  be  no 
messengers,  as  with  the  Greeks  and  Eacine.  Action 
is  to  take  the  place  of  talk  about  action.  The  Roman- 
tic aspiration  is  to  present  "  a  whirl  of  events ;  "  Hugo 
desires  "  a  crowd  in  the  drama.  " 

In  their  zeal  for  "  local  color, "  the  Romanticists  had 
had  predecessors  as  radical  as  they ;  but  they  were 
led  by  it  to  a  further  step  of  great  importance. 
The  tragic  dialogue  of  the  Classicists  is  all  pitched  on 
one  key.  The  slave,  if  he  does  not  actually  use  the 
language  of  the  emperor,  must  at  least  be  dignified. 
Even  in  comedy  Boileau  reproaches  Moliere  with 
travestying  his  characters.  But  now  each  person  was 
to  talk  in  the  language  of  his  station,  at  least  so  far 
as  the  still  obligatory  alexandrine  admitted,  though 
lyric  measures  were  allowed  for  passion  and  distress, 
and  royalty  might  at  times  appear,  as  Lemercier  puts 
it,  "  en  de'shabille'. "  The  public  could  have  asked 
more,  but  it  seems  to  have  welcomed  this  instalment 
of  liberty. 

The  Romanticists  made  no  pretence  of  desiring 
dramatic  realism.  To  their  minds  "  an  impassable 
barrier  separated  reality  according  to  art  from  reality 
according  to  Nature  "  (De  Vigny).  On  the  stage  all 
effects  were  to  be  heightened,  magnified.  The  noble 
should  be  sublime,  the  ugly  grotesque.  They  knew 

1  For  the  predecessors  of  the  Romanticists  in  these  liberties,  see 
Bruuetiere,  £poques  du  theatre  fran9ais,  p.  319. 


176  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

that  such  exaggeration  tended  back  to  the  Classical 
types,  but  they  hoped  to  maintain  a  middle  ground  of 
idealized  reality.  So  while  the  Komantic  movement 
proclaimed  a  radical  revolution,  it  ended  in  a  moder- 
ate reform.  Indeed,  in  some  of  its  phases,  especially 
in  the  essentially  lyric  intrusion  of  the  personality 
of  the  author,  it  was  less  realistic  than  the  Classical 
drama  itself. 

In  this  field  Hugo  is  greatest,  Dumas  most  popular. 
This  latter,  who  was  also  the  most  fertile  and  widely 
read  of  the  Eomantic  novelists,  united  the  blood  of  an 
innkeeper's  daughter  and  of  a  general,  himself  the  son 
of  a  marquis  and  of  a  Creole.  He  sustained  the  tradi- 
tions of  his  family  by  marrying  an  actress,  though 
his  well-known  son  was  an  illegitimate  child.  The 
family  of  young  Dumas  were  poor,  and  he  was  sent  in 
1823  to  seek  his  fortune  in  Paris,  where  indeed  he 
speedily  found  it;  for  in  six  years  he  achieved  a 
dramatic  success  that  made  him  one  of  the  most  pop- 
ular writers  of  his  generation.  He  had  begun  with 
stage  trifles,  but  was  roused  to  more  serious  efforts  by 
the  visit  of  the  English  actors  in  1827.  He  then 
wrote  "  Christine,"  one  of  his  very  few  dramas  in  verse, 
which  he  alleges  would  have  been  acted  at  the  national 
Theatre  Francois  in  1828,  had  it  not  been  for  a  cabal. 
As  it  was,  his  "  Henri  III.,"  in  vigorous  prose,  produced 
in  February,  1829,  was  the  first  successful  drama 
on  the  new  lines  ;  and  though  the  author  lacked  the 
prestige  of  De  Vigny  to  win  critical  recognition  for  his 
theories,  he  did  what  De  Vigny  had  failed  to  do,  —  he 
carried  his  audience  by  storm,  and  gained  a  financial 
success  till  then  unrivalled  in  the  history  of  the 
stage. 

"  Henri  III."  had  certainly  the  vigor  of  overflowing 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL,  177 

genius,  a  contagious  love  of  life  and  action,  a  boundless 
fertility  of  invention,  that  were  thoroughly  character- 
istic of  the  author.  It  mattered  little  to  the  public 
that  his  historical  studies  were  of  a  very  "  impres- 
sionist "  nature,  and,  as  he  said  himself,  "  a  mere  nail 
to  hang  his  pictures  on."  To  them  it  mattered  little, 
either,  that  critics  found  fault  with  his  psychology  or 
with  his  notions  of  mine  and  thine.  The  crowd  was 
pleased,  and  paid  its  money  cheerfully.  Yet  "  Henri 
III."  has  less  literary  value  than  any  drama  of  Hugo, 
less  than  De  Vigny's  "  Chatterton,"  or  several  of  De 
Musset's  comedies ;  but  it  educated  a  public  which, 
because  it  had  been  educated,  ceased  to  care  for  it. 

The  Eevolution  of  July  followed,  and  Dumas'  first 
drama  after  it  is  the  malodorous  "  Antony,"  where  the 
historic  thread  is  dropped  for  a  romance  of  modern 
life,  that  Dumas  may  graft  on  the  tree  of  literature 
the  vigorous  shoot  of  illicit  sexual  relations  that  has 
borne  such  varied  dead-sea  fruit  in  succeeding  genera- 
tions. "  Antony  "  is  an  apology  for  adultery  and  a  de- 
fence of  suicide.  Its  success  was  more  one  of  sensation 
than  of  esteem,  and  the  author  returned  to  the  histori- 
cal drama,  to  attain  in  "  Le  Tour  de  Nesle"  (1832)  the 
ne  plus  ultra  of  sentimentalism  and  his  greatest  popu- 
lar triumph,  though  hardly  one  of  which  he  had  cause 
to  be  proud,  since  some  of  its  most  telling  effects  had 
been  borrowed  without  acknowledgment.  He  followed 
this  with  a  considerable  number  of  sensational  dramas,1 
but  was  gradually  diverted  to  the  more  profitable  field 
of  prose  fiction,  though  his  inexhaustible  fecundity 
never  quite  abandoned  the  stage.  But  he  could  not 

1  The  best  are  Kean,  1 836  ;  Paul  Jones,  1838 ;  Mademoiselle  de  Belle- 
Isle,  1839;  Un  Mariage  sous  Louis  XV.,  1841 ;  Les  Demoiselles  de 
Saint-Cyr,  1843. 

12 


178  MODERN   FRENCH   LITEEATUEE. 

equal  his  early  efforts  in  this  genre,  which,  though  far 
from  great,  were  most  useful  in  popularizing  Komantic 
ideas  among  those  whose  pecuniary  aid  was  a  condition 
of  material  success. 

De  Vigny's  "  More  de  Venise,"  which  dates  from  the 
same  year  as  "  Henri  III.,"  was  the  most  faithful 
translation  of  the  great  English  dramatist  that  France 
had  yet  seen ;  and  so  it  served  as  a  powerful  plea  for 
masculine  vigor  and  directness  of  speech,  as  opposed  to 
the  weak  conventionalism  of  Soumet  and  Delavigne. 
A  veritable  tempest  raged  over  Desdemona's  "hand- 
kerchief." So  vulgar  a  word  shocked  the  conservatives, 
who  would  have  had  it  called  a  "tissue,"  and  pro- 
tested loudly  against  this  defilement  of  the  poetic 
vocabulary,  as  they  did  also  against  some  metrical 
liberties  with  the  alexandrine  muse,  that  seemed  little 
less  than  sacrilege  to  the  disciples  of  Boileau. 

In  "  Othello  "  De  Vigny  had  violated  too  many  prej- 
udices to  win  great  success ;  and  his  little  comedy  that 
followed,  "  Quitte  pour  la  peur,"  hardly  deserved  any. 
Nor  can  his  "  Mare'chale  d'Ancre  "  claim  notice,  except 
as  the  introduction  to  his  study  of  the  age  of  Louis 
XIII.  that  was  soon  to  produce  "  Cinq-Mars."  The 
dramatic  strength  of  De  Vigny  centres  in  "  Chatter- 
ton  "  (1835),  a  plea  for  poetic  idealism  that  com- 
mands admiration  though  it  is  too  pessimistic  to  be 
enjoyed  as  a  work  of  dramatic  art.  The  play  was  drawn 
from  his  own  "  Stello,"  and  was  in  prose,  till  then 
rarely  used  in  tragedy  ;  but  in  the  mouth  of  the  Eng- 
lish boy-poet  De  Vigny  has  placed  speeches  that  lack 
nothing  but  the  form  of  pure  poetry.  To  the  Lord- 
Mayor  who  cavils  at  the  uselessness  of  the  poet  in 
the  ship  of  state,  Chatterton  replies  with  a  noble  flash, 
"  The  finger  of  the  Lord  points  the  course ;  he  reads 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  179 

it  in  the  stars."1  So  far,  however,  as  Chatterton  could 
read  the  celestial  signs  in  his  own  case,  they  pointed 
to  suicide,  by  which  his  pride  thought  to  avenge  itself 
on  society  for  its  disdain.  Perhaps  this  very  morbid 
pride  was  what  attracted  De  Vigny  to  the  subject. 
But  his  treatment  of  it  is  very  powerful,  and  keeps  the 
play  alive  to-day,  though,  as  Sainte-Beuve  remarked, 
"it  touched  the  nerves  rather  than  the  heart."  In 
those  days  nerves  were  certainly  more  delicate  than 
now.  We  read  that  at  its  climax  "  there  was  a  cry  of 
horror,  of  pity  and  enthusiasm.  The  audience  rose 
and  remained  standing  for  ten  minutes ;  the  men  clap- 
ping, the  women  waving  their  handkerchiefs."  But 
De  Vigny  probably  perceived  the  limitations  of  dra- 
matic Komanticism  too  clearly  to  seek  to  follow  up  his 
tragic  success. 

De  Musset  was  of  equal  and  higher  dramatic  origi- 
nality.2 It  is  unfortunate  that  his  first  play,  "  Les 
Nuits  ve*nitiennes,"  should  have  fallen  before  a  well- 
organized  opposition  exasperated  by  the  recent  success 
of  Hugo's  "  Hernani ; "  for  by  this  he  was  diverted  from 
the  stage,  though  he  had  more  genuine  dramatic  talent 
than  any  other  member  of  the  school.  This  first  essay 
showed  his  complete  accord  with  the  fundamental 
Eomantic  conception  that  tragedy  must  mingle  with 
comedy  on  the  stage  as  in  life ;  but  with  him  mingling 
was  not  juxtaposition  but  interpenetration,  and  he 
had  too  delicate  a  taste  to  yield  to  the  extravagances 
of  Dumas  and  the  lesser  Romanticists.  Nursing  his 
genius  on  the  study  of  Shakspere,  and  writing  for  the 
publisher  rather  than  the  stage,  his  work  shows  con- 

1  Act  III.  scene  6. 

2  See  especially  Lemaitre's  preface  to  Jouast's  edition  of  De  Musset's 
Theatre,  and  also  Brunetiere,  Epoques  du  theatre  f ratals,  357. 


180  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

stant  progress  from  the  "  Storm  and  Stress  "  of  "  A 
quoi  revent  les  jeunes  filles"  and  "La  Coupe  et  les 
levres  "  to  "  Fantasio,"  "  Lorenzaccio,"  and  "  Les  Ca- 
prices de  Marianne,"  the  only  one  of  these  comedies 
that  is  still  frequently  acted.  Here,  as  in  his  essay 
"De  la  trage'die"  (1838), he  refuses  absolute  allegiance 
to  the  Romantic  or  Classical  principles,  and  seeks  by  a 
judicious  eclecticism  to  combine  the  outward  appear- 
ance of  restraint  with  the  new  liberty  to  associate  the 
weird  and  terrible  in  human  life  with  its  higher  comic 
aspects,  as  had  been  done  by  Shakspere. 

De  Musset,  perhaps  more  than  any  other  contempo- 
rary dramatist,  certainly  more  than  any  of  his  French 
predecessors,  understood  the  presentation  of  complex 
characters,  especially  of  such  as  illustrated  the  con- 
tradictions of  his  own  nature.  To  this  power  he 
added  a  ready  wit,  and  made  his  plays  sparkle  with 
dialogue  unequalled  since  Beaumarchais.  But,  though 
nearly  all  this  work  was  done  between  1833  and  1835, 
it  had  no  immediate  effect  on  the  development  of  dra- 
matic art,  for  none  of  these  plays  were  acted  till  1848, 
and  they  did  not  establish  a  definite  place  on  the  stage 
till  the  later  years  of  the  Second  Empire.  From  about 
1865  their  influence  can  be  traced  as  a  corrective  to  the 
excessive  naturalism  of  the  school  of  Balzac,  —  a  vindi- 
cation of  the  rights  of  fancy  to  roam  with  the  airy,  trip- 
ping grace  and  elegance  that  make  the  charm  of  the 
Italian  Renaissance,  of  the  sonnets  of  Petrarch,  the 
comedies  of  Marivaux,  and  the  undiscovered  country  of 
Watteau's  shepherds.  In  this  De  Musset  showed  more 
real  originality  and  a  truer  dramatic  genius  than  De 
Vigny  or  Hugo.  Two  or  three  of  his  comedies  con- 
tain the  quintessence  of  Romantic  imaginative  art, 
and  will  probably  hold  the  stage  longer  than  any 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  181 

other  dramatic  work  of  this  school.  They  show  most 
and  best  the  unchecked  freedom  of  fancy  which  joined 
with  the  spirit  of  realistic  comedy  to  produce  the  mod- 

j^f^       Al,s~~f^-f'_.0rm—^^ 

ern  French  drama.1 

In  prose  fiction,  as  in  the  drama  and  in  poetry,  the 
distinctive  characteristic  of  Komantic  work  is  its  sub- 
jectivity and  its  unbridled  imagination,  both  of  which 
show  themselves  in  the  historians  and  critics  of  the 
movement,  but  are  naturally  most  marked  in  the 
novelists,  who  from  this  time  become  more  and  more 
the  dominant  element  in  French  literary  life.  All  the 
Eomanticists  of  whom  we  have  spoken — Hugo,  Gautier, 
De  Vigny,  Dumas  —  are  more  widely  known  and  more 
generally  prized  to-day  for  their  prose  fiction  than  for 
their  verses ;  though,  except  in  Dumas'  case,  these  are 
of  far  higher  literary  value. 

In  "Cinq-Mars  "De  Vigny  gave  French  literature 
its  best  historical  novel,  which  he  based  on  a  most 
minute  study  of  more  than  three  hundred  volumes, 
while  he  vivified  all  with  a  flight  of  fancy  and  sweep 
of  narration  that  he  never  equalled.  In  his  concep- 
tion of  the  romance  he  owed  much  to  Walter  Scott; 
and  he  might  have  profited  still  more  from  him,  for 
while  "  Cinq-Mars  "  is  an  excellent  piece  of  picturesque 
imagination,  it  is  exceedingly  poor  history.  It  is  vivid, 
dramatic,  delicate  in  details,  firm  in  delineation,  or 
perhaps  one  should  say  distortion,  of  character.  For 
neither  Eichelieu,  nor  his  secretary  Joseph,  nor  De  Thou, 
nor  King  Louis,  is  true  to  history  ;  and  they  are  hardly 
more  true  to  human  nature.  They  seem  rather  chang- 
ing masks  than  mobile  faces;  types,  personifications, 
rather  than  men.  But,  with  all  its  faults,  "  Cinq-Mars  " 

1  Cp.  Brunetiere,  llpoques  du  theatre  frai^ais,  p.  348. 


182  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

remains  a  very  brilliant  study  of  a  critical  period  in  the 
social  and  political  life  of  France. 

De  Vigny  wrote  also  little  biographical  tales  of  Gil- 
bert, Chatterton,  and  Che'nier,  —  three  poets  "  snatched 
away  in  beauty's  bloom,"  —  and  a  group  of  military 
stories,  "Servitude  et  grandeur  inilitaires,"  of  great 
nobility  and  pathos.  Here  he  spoke  of  a  career  that 
he  knew  both  by  experience  and  family  tradition. 
The  self-abnegating  heroism  of  the  soldier  had  a  pecu- 
liar charm  for  his  stern  temperament ;  and  he  dwelt 
with  affection  on  the  glory  and  pathos  of  military  life 
at  a  time  when  almost  every  Frenchman  had  shared 
the  thrills  of  the  victories  and  the  gloom  of  the  defeat 
of  their  great  emperor.  "  Here,"  says  a  kindred  spirit, 
John  Stuart  Mill,  "the  poem  of  human  life  is  open 
before  us,  and  M.  de  Vigny  does  but  chant  from  it 
in  a  voice  of  subdued  sadness  .  .  .  the  sentiment  of 
duty  to  its  extremest  consequences."  There  is  remark- 
able artistic  restraint  in  "  Le  Cachet  rouge,"  a  bit  of 
psychology  from  the  Eeign  of  Terror;  and  the  chapter 
in  "La  Canne  de  jonc"  that  describes  the  meeting 
of  Pope  and  Emperor  is  the  stylistic  gem  of  a  book 
that  will  rank  very  high  among  the  rhetorical  master- 
pieces of  France. 

De  Musset's  prose  occupies  more  space  than  his 
lyrics  or  his  dramas;  but  it  has  far  less  value,  and 
owes  its  chief  significance  to  the  clearness  with  which 
it  exhibits  the  progress  of  his  ethical  disintegration. 
In  "  Emmeliiie  "  we  have  a  rather  dangerous  juggling 
with  the  psychology  of  love.  Then  follows  a  study 
of  simultaneous  love,  "  Les  Deux  mattresses,"  quite  in 
the  spirit  of  Jean  Paul.  Three  sympathetic  excur- 
sions into  Parisian  Bohemia  follow,1  and  then  "Le 
1  Frederic  et  Bernadette,  Mimi  Pinson,  Le  Secret  de  Javotte. 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  183 

Fils  de  Titien  "  and  "  Croisilles,"  carefully  elaborated 
historical  novelettes;  the  latter  overflowing  still  with 
Eomantic  spirits,  and  contrasting  strangely  with  "  La 
Mouche,"  one  of  the  last  flickerings  of  his  imagination. 
"  Margot "  bears  marks  of  George  Sand,  and  "  Le  Merle 
blanc  "  is  a  sort  of  allegory  of  their  rupture,  based  on 
the  Ugly  Duckling  of  the  nursery.  Finally,  "Pierre 
et  Camille"  is  a  pretty  but  slight  tale  of  deaf-mute 
love. 

More  ambitious  but  less  interesting  is  De  Musset's 
"Confession,"  the  immediate  result  of  his  unhappy 
Italian  experience.  It  shows  even  in  1836  whither 
the  shrinking  from  all  moral  compulsion  and  self- 
control  was  leading  him.  He  sees  his  ethical  weak- 
ness, but  attributes  it,  perversely  enough,  to  the  spirit 
of  an  age  made  sick  by  Napoleon,  whose  fall  had  "  left 
a  ruined  world  for  a  generation  weighted  by  care,"  who 
"struggled  to  fill  their  lungs  with  the  air  he  had 
breathed."  "  During  the  Empire,  while  husbands  and 
brothers  were  in  Germany,  anxious  mothers  brought 
into  the  world  an  ardent,  pale,  nervous  generation." 
Thus  De  Musset  would  account  for  his  own  lack  of 
will;  but  surely  it  was  rather  the  spacious  times  of 
the  Empire  that  left  the  impulse  of  their  energy  on 
the  literary  men  of  a  generation  of  which  Hugo  is 
more  typical  than  De  Musset.  His  talent  appears  to 
more  advantage  in  later  critical  essays,  especially  the 
witty  letters  of  Dupuis  and  Cotonet,  that  satirize 
modern  marriage,  the  journalists,  the  novelists,  and 
especially  the  critics  of  thoroughbred  Komanticism. 
Indeed,  he  does  not  fail  to  send  a  few  Parthian  shafts 
even  at  the  high-priest  of  the  movement,  —  at  Hugo 
himself. 

As  in  poetry,  so  here,  the  sharpest  contrast  to  De 


184  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

Musset  is  Gautier,  to  whom  in  fiction  as  in  verse  form 
is  the  paramount  interest,  while  psychology  is  subor- 
dinated or  suppressed.  In  the  whole  range  of  his 
work  there  is  not  one  clearly  drawn  character ;  and  were 
it  not  for  the  dreary,  muddled  efforts  of  Mademoiselle 
de  Maupin's  Albert  to  explain  himself,  one  might  say 
there  was  no  attempt  at  one.  This  was  in  some  degree 
true  of  De  Musset ;  but  Gautier's  tales  lacked  the  in- 
vention, feeling,  and  emotional  intensity  of  the  other's 
work,  good  or  bad.  It  has  been  said  that  his  novels 
start  from  nothing,  and  end  where  they  began.  He 
enters  the  field  with  "Les  Jeunes  France,"  stories 
mildly  satirizing  the  vagaries  of  his  own  school,  freaks 
of  luxuriant  fancy  in  which  we  miss  a  single  touch  of 
nature.  Nor  shall  we  find  it  in  the  frankly  hedonistic 
"  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin,"  l  exquisite  in  style,  but  so 
ostentatious  in  its  disregard  of  moral  conventions  as  to 
close  the  Academy  forever  to  one  who  would  surely  else 
have  won  a  distinguished  place  among  those  "  Immor- 
tals." More  in  the  playful  satyr  vein  of  "  Les  Jeunes 
France"  is  "Fortunio,"  which  he  calls  "a  hymn  to 
beauty,  wealth,  and  happiness,  the  sole  trinity  that  we 
recognize."  But  the  hymn  is  not  inspiring.  His 
Fortunio  is  so  cold,  so  selfish,  that  the  reader  cannot 
sympathize  with  the  gentle  Musidora's  devotion,  still 
less  with  her  despairing  suicide.  There  is  a  taste  of 
dead-sea  fruit  in  Gautier's  feast.  "Vanity  of  vani- 
ties" is  the  real,  though  unexpressed,  moral  of  this 
book. 

And  yet  in  1863  Gautier  writes  :  "  ' Fortunio'  is  the 

1  Du  Camp  (Gautier,  p.  140)  says  that  Mademoiselle  or  rather 
Madame  de  Maupin  was  an  historical  character,  who  sang  at  the 
Paris  Opera,  went  through  a  large  part  of  Europe  in  male  attire  as  an 
adventuress,  and  died  in  1 707  in  a  convent  at  the  age  of  44. 


THE  ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  185 

last  work  in  which  I  have  freely  expressed  my  true 
thought.  From  that  point  the  invasion  of  cant  and 
the  necessity  of  subjecting  myself  to  the  conventions 
of  journalism  have  thrown  me  into  purely  physical  de- 
scription." For  the  next  twenty-five  years  the  great 
bulk  of  his  work  was  in  artistic,  dramatic,  and  literary 
criticism,  uncongenial  but  remunerative.  He  had  be- 
gun such  work  some  years  before  with  critical  essays 
on  the  "  Grotesques  "  of  the  sixteenth  century,  whom 
he  had  treated  with  genius,  insight,  exaggeration,  and 
inaccuracy.  He  had  also  written  contemporary  criti- 
cisms of  Hugo  and  others  who  "  answered  to  Hernani's 
horn."  But  in  1836  he  became  a  staff-critic  of  "La 
Presse,"  and  later  of  the  official  "Moniteur"  and 
"  Journal ; "  and  to  these  he  contributed  some  two  thou- 
sand articles,1  wasting  precious  genius  on  work  that 
was  inevitably  ephemeral.  But  from  this  constant 
drudgery  he  snatched  time  to  compose  and  polish  the 
most  perfect  of  his  poems,  and  to  write  short  stories 
where  fancy  could  supply  his  lack  of  sustained  imagi- 
nation. Among  these  the  best  are  "  Avatar,"  a  weird  tale 
of  the  transmigration  of  souls ;  "  Jettatura,"  a  tragedy 
of  the  evil  eye ;  and  "  Arria  Marcella,"  a  phantasmagoria 
of  revived  Pompeii.  The  phantom  love  that  inspired 
"  Albertus  "  reappears  in  "  Omphale,"  in  "  The  Mummy's 
Foot,"  "The  Opium  Pipe,"  "La  Toison  d'or,"  and, above 
all,  in  "La  Morte  amoureuse,"  which  in  form  is  one  of 
the  most  perfect  tales  in  the  language.  He  attempted 

1  See  their  titles  in  Spoelberch  de  Louvenjoul,  Histoire  des 
ceuvres  de  T.  Gautier,  1887.  Of  this  journalistic  work  Gautier 
himself  says  regretfully,  — 

O  poetes  divins !  je  ne  suis  plus  des  votres, 

On  m'a  fait  une  niche,  ou  je  veille,  tapi 

Dans  le  has  d'un  journal,  comme  un  dogue  accroupi. 


186  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

archaeological  fiction  also  in  "  Le  Eoman  da  la  momie," 
but  for  this  he  had  hardly  an  adequate  equipment. 

More  congenial  to  his  genius,  and  surely  his  most 
charming  prose  work,  is  "  Le  Capitaine  Fracasse,"  which 
he  justly  calls  "  a  bill  drawn  in  my  youth  and  redeemed 
in  middle  life,"  for  it  shows  all  his  youthful  verve 
mastered  by  the  mature  artist.  We  are  transported  to 
the  fascinating  times  of  Louis  XIIL,  to  ruined  castles 
and  bands  of  strolling  actors,  for  which  Scarron's 
"  Eoman  comique  "  may  have  served  as  prototype,  and 
to  the  Paris  of  the  Eenaissance,  which  furnishes  the 
book's  most  brilliant  chapters.  Finally,  in  his  last  novel, 
"  Spirite,"  Gautier  returned  once  more  to  phantom  love, 
and  by  a  skilful  appeal  to  the  skeptical  credulity  of 
the  time,  won  a  success  more  rapid,  more  widespread, 
but  less  lasting  and  less  deserved,  than  attended  "  Fra- 
casse "  or  "  Fortunio." 

In  his  fiction  as  in  his  verse  Gautier  will  satisfy  in 
no  subject  that  calls  for  human  sympathy  or  insight 
into  character ;  but  wherever  an  exquisite  power  of 
vision  upborne  by  a  vocabulary  of  boundless  resource 
and  unrivalled  delicacy  of  shading  will  suffice,  wherever 
the  plastic  alone  is  demanded,  wherever  the  author 
may  be  artist,  he  is  almost  without  a  rival.  And  it 
should  be  noted  that  this  limitation  in  creative  power 
was  helpful  to  him  in  criticism,  where  he  could  apply 
his  delicate  sense  of  the  beautiful  to  fix  and  define  the 
merits  of  others,  to  explain  and  reconvey  their  charm ; 
hence,  too,  his  descriptions  of  travel  are  among  the 
most  marvellous  word-pictures  in  any  language,  and 
would  be  among  the  masterpieces  of  literature  if  ut 
pictura  poesis  were  not  a  false  canon  of  criticism. 

Nearly  allied  to  Gautier  in  early  friendship,  in  liter- 
ary labors,  in  his  virtues  and  his  short-comings,  was 


THE   ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  187 

Gerard  de  Nerval,1  whose  translation  of  Faust  the 
aged  Goethe  loved  to  read.  In  delicate  elaboration 
his  short  tales  rival  all  but  the  best  of  Gautier.  "  Les 
Femmes  du  Caire,"  a  brilliant  description  of  Egyptian 
life  from  "  Scenes  de  la  vie  orientale  "  (1848-1850),  is 
still  popular.  Equally  deserving  and  more  curious  are 
the  "Contes  et  face'ties"  (1856)  and  "La  Boheme  ga- 
lante  "  (1856),  whose  vivid  but  disordered  imagination 
suggests  a  mind  not  wholly  sound.  Indeed,  after  his 
return  from  a  journey  to  the  East,  he  suffered  from 
several  attacks  of  insanity,  and  died  at  last  by  his  own 
hand. 

If  we  review  the  whole  production  of  the  Roman- 
ticists from  1830  to  1840,  there  will  appear  a  marked 
tendency  to  turn  from  the  lyric  to  the  drama  and  from 
the  drama  to  fiction.  This  is  seen  in  Hugo,  in  De  Vigny, 
in  De  Musset,  and  in  Gautier,  but  most  of  all  in  that 
frank  vender  of  his  pen,  Alexandre  Dumas.  In  1830 
this  enfant  terrible  had  suddenly  abandoned  the  drama 
for  a  frolicsome  run  in  the  political  field,  and  seems  to 
have  thoroughly  enjoyed  the  bustling  days  of  the  July 
Eevolution,  of  which  he  tells  the  most  incredible 
adventures,  —  how,  like  a  true  ancestor  of  Daudet's 
Tartarin,  he  made  a  desperate  march  on  Soissons,  and 
captured  with  unaided  but  resistless  courage  —  a  pow- 
der-magazine !  And  some  grain  of  truth  must  under- 
lie the  tale ;  for  when  the  tempest  calmed,  he  had  in 
some  way  earned  the  distrust  and  forfeited  the  favor 
of  Louis  Philippe.  This  might  have  led  him  to  look 
to  a  literary  field  less  under  the  control  of  the  political 
police ;  but  his  work  continued  wholly  dramatic  till 

1  Born  1808 ;  died  1855.  Cp.  Eckermann's  Conversations  with 
Goethe,  Jan.  3, 1830.  Berlioz  used  Nerval's  translation  for  his  "Dam- 
nation of  Faust." 


188  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

the  reckless  plagiarism  of  "  Le  Tour  de  Nesle "  in- 
volved him  in  a  duel,  and  made  a  Swiss  tour  expe- 
dient, during  which  he  kept  pen  and  scissors  busy 
with  "  Memoires  de  voyage,"  —  exceedingly  diffuse,  but 
enlivened  with  such  a  flow  of  spirits  as  to  be  still 
good  reading  for  an  idle  hour. 

Then,  beginning  with  "  Isabelle  de  Baviere  "  (1835), 
he  poured  out  in  ten  years  more  than  a  hundred  vol- 
umes of  romance;  but  his  great  fame  dated  from 
"  Monte  Cristo "  (1841-1845),  a  story  perhaps  more 
universally  known  than  any  other  in  modern  fiction. 
Bemarkable  in  any  case,  it  becomes  astonishing  when 
it  is  considered  that  it  was  published  as  it  was  written 
from  day  to  day  in  a  newspaper,  so  that  Dumas  had 
no  opportunity  for  revision  or  elaboration.  This  de- 
vice, popular  on  the  Continent,  for  securing  two  prices 
for  one  book,  did  not  originate  with  Dumas.  Sue  had 
already  adopted  it  for  his  sensational  and  anti-Jesuit- 
ical tale,  "  Le  Juif  errant ; "  but  the  success  of  "  Monte 
Cristo "  made  it  a  journalistic  habit,  so  that  no 
French  daily  is  now  complete  without  its  half-dozen 
columns  of  fiction  "below  the  line."  This  has  been  a 
financial  gain  to  authors,  and  has  increased  the  number 
of  readers,  but  it  has  been  of  doubtful  aid  to  literature. 
All  men  have  not  the  ready  invention  of  Dumas. 
Writing  with  the  "copy-boy"  at  their  elbow  has 
injured  the  work  of  many,  even  perhaps  of  the  very 
greatest,  of  modern  French  novelists.  Yet  in  the 
case  of  "  Monte  Cristo  "  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  time 
or  elaboration  could  have  added  to  its  unfailing  verve, 
its  inexhaustible  fertility  of  resource,  the  vraisem- 
llance  that  never  abandons  even  its  wildest  freaks  of 
fancy,  and  the  tension  of  its  interest,  which  is  ever 
rousing  an  expectation  that  it  never  disappoints.  A 


THE    ROMANTIC   SCHOOL.  189 

half-century  still  waits  for  its  equal  as  a  romance  of 
plot  and  incident. 

"  Monte  Cristo  "  was  followed,  or  rather  accompa- 
nied, by  the  hardly  less  excellent  "  Three  Guardsmen," 
perhaps  in  its  construction  the  still  unrivalled  model 
of  the  romance  of  adventure.  After  such  successes 
Dumas  claimed  the  rights  of  a  favorite,  and  became 
for  some  years  a  sort  of  chartered  libertine  of  the 
press,  certain  that  whatever  he  wrote  or  was  sup- 
posed to  write  would  bring  him  readers  and  large 
returns.  He  poured  out  volumes  with  astonishing 
speed,  and  his  income  from  copyright  during  this 
heyday  of  his  fame  was  not  less  than  200,000  francs 
a  year.  But  he  spent  this  and  more  in  semi-bar- 
barous luxury,  and,  that  production  might  not  slacken, 
he  supplemented  his  own  pen  by  a  system  of  organ- 
ized collaboration  that  is  probably  unique  in  literary 
history.  In  1844,  in  the  flush  of  his  success,  he 
had  made  contracts  to  furnish  within  a  year  more 
than  the  most  skilled  penman  could  possibly  have 
written.  Hence  he  was  forced  to  the  questionable  re- 
sort of  "  inspiring  "  two  secretaries,  from  whom  there 
was  developed  a  novel-bureau,  where  Dumas  furnished 
little  but  the  plot  and  the  titlepage.  Not  content 
even  with  this,  he  ventured  to  offer  to  the  public  the 
most  impudent  compilations  and  plagiarisms.  Thus  he 
was  able  to  produce  fifty  or  sixty  volumes  a  year,  and 
some  twelve  hundred  in  all,  while,  in  regard  to  the 
greater  part  of  them,  there  is  no  certainty  that  he  had 
so  much  as  read  their  contents.  But  though,  even  as 
early  as  1847,  these  methods  were  unsparingly  exposed, 
yet  his  touch,  whenever  he  did  put  his  hand  to  the 
work,  was  so  admirable  that  wherever  it  was  felt  the 
fame  and  life  of  the  book  were  secure. 


190  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

The  years  that  preceded  the  Second  Eepublic  mark 
the  summit  of  his  genius.  They  count  "La  Eeine 
Margot,"  "  Vingt  ans  apres,"  and  "  Le  Vicomte  de 
Bragelonne/'  all  tales  of  seventeenth-century  life  with 
which  his  dramatic  studies  had  given  him  superficial 
familiarity.  But  presently  this  popularity  turned  his 
head,  and  filled  him  with  a  notion  of  his  importance,  — 
a  megalomania  that  would  be  laughable  if  it  were  not 
sad.  He  built  himself  a  huge  theatre  and  a  palatial 
castle.  In  1846,  when  by  dint  of  impudence  he  had 
secured  from  the  government  a  commission  to  "  write 
up  "  Algeria,  then  a  new  colony,  he  did  not  scruple  to 
turn  the  transport  that  was  to  convey  him  there  into  a 
pleasure-yacht,  and  so  to  visit  at  the  public  expense 
Carthage,  Tunis,  and  other  places  that  he  thought  he 
could  exploit  with  his  pen.  The  government,  however, 
was  less  long-suffering  than  the  public ;  publishers  too 
began  to  take  umbrage ;  lawsuits  multiplied  in  his  path, 
and  the  Revolution  of  1848  crowned  his  misfortunes 
with  a  partial  eclipse  of  popularity.  From  this  time 
on,  his  attempts  to  attract  public  attention,  if  not  es- 
teem, such  as  his  association  with  Garibaldi  in  1860, 
served  only  to  draw  on  him  the  ridicule  of  the  thought- 
ful, —  a  ridicule  that  yielded  to  pity  as  it  grew  clear  that 
his  fertile  brain  was  giving  way  as  his  moral  nature  had 
already  done. 

His  friend  the  critic  Jules  Janin  thus  summarizes 
his  genius :  "A  rnind  capable  of  learning  all,  forgetting 
all,  comprehending  all,  neglecting  all.  Rare  mind, 
rare  attention,  subtle  spirit,  gross  talent.  Quick  com- 
prehension, execution  barely  sufficient,  an  artisan  rather 
than  an  artist.  Skilful  to  forge,  but  poor  to  chisel,  and 
awkward  in  working  with  the  tools  that  he  knew  so 
well  how  to  make.  An  inexhaustible  mingling  of 


THE   ROMANTIC    SCHOOL.  191 

dreams,  falsehoods,  truths,  fancies,  impudence,  and 
propriety ;  of  the  vagabond  and  the  seigneur,  of  rich 
and  poor.  Sparkling  and  noisy,  the  most  wilful  and 
the  most  facile  of  men ;  a  mixture  of  the  tricky  lawyer 
and  of  the  epic  poet ;  of  Achilles  and  Thersites ;  swag- 
gering, boastful,  vain  and  —  a  good  fellow."  Quite  a 
unique  figure  even  among  the  vagaries  of  Eomantic 
genius,  of  which  he  is  the  supreme  type,  he  left  imita- 
tors but  no  successors.  He  died  in  1870,  poor,  but  re- 
lieved from  want  and  tenderly  cared  for  by  his  son,  a 
man  of  equal  talent  and  greater  probity. 

All  the  novelists  of  this  generation  partook  more  or 
less  of  the  Komantic  spirit.  Traces  of  it  can  be  found 
in  Mdrime'e,  and  it  dominates  a  large  section  of  the 
work  of  Sand  and  Balzac,  though  these  must  be  ranked, 
with  Stendhal,  as  the  founders  of  Naturalistic  fiction. 
It  was  in  the  nature  of  Komantic  "  individualism  "  and 
"liberty"  that  the  limits  of  its  sway  should  be  ill- 
defined, —  that  even  the  same  writer  should  seem  at 
one  time  wholly  under  its  influence,  and  at  another 
quite  independent  of  it,  or,  like  Gautier,  subtly  under- 
mining its  power.  For  the  two  decades  that  preceded 
the  Revolution  of  1848  every  writer  that  led,  every 
reader  that  welcomed,  the  advent  of  literature  in  new 
fields,  the  opening  of  new  paths,  was  a  Eomanticist. 
In  the  advance  they  had  the  cohesion  of  a  common 
impulse  and  a  common  enthusiasm ;  but  for  construc- 
tive effort  this  cohesion  failed.  Each  struck  out  on  his 
own  path,  and  all  but  the  supreme  genius  of  Hugo 
were  pushed  aside  at  last  by  the  Naturalistic  wave. 


192  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTEK   VI. 

THE    YOUNG    HUGO. 

VICTOR  HUGO  is  incomparably  the  greatest  French 
writer  of  his  century,  and,  except  for  Goethe,  perhaps 
the  greatest  of  our  time.  His  first  volume  appeared  in 
1822 ;  his  literary  activity  continued  till  his  death,  in 
1885,  and  has  been  prolonged  beyond  it  by  posthumous 
volumes.  Thus  for  nearly  two-thirds  of  the  century 
he  was  a  leader  in  French  literature,  and  for  the  greater 
part  of  that  time  he  was  pre-eminently  the  leader.  But 
since  he  represents  the  supreme  effort  of  an  egoistical, 
individualistic  movement,  it  is  only  by  examining  in 
some  detail  the  circumstances  and  changing  fortunes 
of  his  career  that  his  character  or  his  work  can  be 
appreciated.1 

1  Born  in  1802.  Poetry:  Odes,  1822  and  1826;  Orientales,  1827; 
Feuilles  d'automne,  1831;  Chants  du  crepuscule,  1835;  Voix  inte- 
rieures,  1837  ;  Les  Rayons  et  les  ombres,  1840  ;  Les  Chatiments,  1853; 
Les  Contemplations,  1856  ;  La  Legende  des  siecles,  I.,  1859  ;  Chansons 
des  rues  et  des  bois,  1865;  L'Annee  terrible,  1872;  La  Le'gende  des 
siecles,  II.  and  III.,  1877,  1883;  L'Art  d'etre  grand-pere,  1877  ;  Quatre 
vents  de  1'esprit,  1881.  Drama:  Cromwell,  1827;  Hernani,  1830; 
Marion  de  Lorme,  1831  ;  Le  Roi  s'amuse,  1832  ;  Lucrece  Borgia,  Marie 
Tudor,  1833;  Angelo,  1835;  Ruy  Bias,  1838;  Les  Burgraves,  1843. 
Fiction:  Han  d'Islande,  1823;  Bug-Jargal,  1825;  Dernier  jour  d'un 
condamne',  1828;  Notre-Dame  de  Paris,  1831  ;  Les  Mise'rables,  1862; 
Les  Travailleurs  de  la  mer,  1 866 ;  L'Homme  qui  rit,  1 869 ;  Quatre- 
vingt-treize,  1874.  Political:  Napoleon  le  petit,  1852;  Histoire  d'un 
crime,  1877  ;  Actes  et  paroles,  1875-1876. 

Criticism:  Brunetiere,  Poesie  lyrique,  i.  181,  ii.  75;  Faguet,  xix. 
siecle,  1 53 ;  Dupuy,  V.  Hugo,  1'homme  et  le  poete,  and  V.  Hugo,  son 
oeuvre  poe'tique ;  Renouvier,  V.  Hugo,  le  poete ;  Duval,  Dictionnaire 
des  metaphores  de  V.  Hugo.  See  also  the  literature  cited  in  Lanson, 
p.  1027. 


THE   YOUNG   HUGO.  193 

He  himself  has  summed  up  in  familiar  lines  the  con- 
dition of  Europe  and  his  own  at  the  time  of  his  birth. 
"  Eome,"  he  says,  "  was  replacing  Sparta  "  in  the  French 
Eepublic.  "  Napoleon  was  already  appearing  beneath 
Bonaparte ;  the  forehead  of  the  emperor  was  breaking 
in  many  a  place  the  narrow  mask  of  the  First  Consul. 
Then  in  Besanc/m,  an  ancient  Spanish  city,  there  was 
born,  of  Breton  and  of  Lorraine  blood,  a  child  without 
color,  sight,  or  voice ;  so  weak  that  like  some  fairy 
thing  he  was  abandoned  by  all  save  his  mother.  This 
child  whom  Life  was  effacing  from  her  book,  who  had 
not  even  a  to-morrow  to  live,  is  I." 1  This  climax  is 
noteworthy  and  characteristic,  for  Hugo  never  doubted 
that  it  was  a  climax,  nor  that  what  was  happening  to 
him  was  of  primary  importance  to  humanity.  Note- 
worthy, too,  is  the  site  of  his  birth.  Spain  finds  an 
echo,  not  only  in  his  early  work,  but  in  the  whole 
character  of  his  thought.  And  his  parentage  united 
significant  elements.  His  father  had  been  a  soldier, 
and,  as  Hugo  tells  us,  one  of  the  first  volunteers  of 
the  Eepublic ;  while  his  mother  was  a  Vende'an,  who, 
as  her  son  tells  us,  "  when  a  poor  girl  of  fifteen,  had 


1  Ce  siecle  avait  deux  ans !  Borne  remplacait  Sparte, 
Deja  Napoleon  pe^ait  sous  Bonaparte, 
Et  du  premier  consul,  deja  par  maint  endroit 
Le  front  de  1'empereur  brisait  le  masque  etroit. 
Alors  dans  Besancon,  vieille  ville  espagnole, 
Jete  comme  la  graine  au  gre  de  Tair  qui  vole, 
Naquit  d'un  sang  breton  et  lorrain  &  la  fois, 
Un  enfant  sans  couleur,  sans  regard  et  sans  voix; 
Si  debile,  qu'il  fut,  ainsi  qu'une  chimere, 
Abaudonne  de  tous,  excepte'  de  sa  mere  .  .  . 
Get  enfant  que  la  vie  effa^ait  de  son  livre, 
Et  qui  n'avait  pas  meme  un  lendemain  a  vivre, 
C'est  moi. 

(Feuilles  d'automne,  I.) 
13 


194  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

fled  through  the  forests,  a  Irigande,  like  Madame  de 
Bonchamp  and  Madame  de  Kochejacquelin."  This 
however  is,  to  speak  charitably,  a  mirage  of  Hugo's 
imagination,  for  in  fact  she  was  the  daughter  of  a  sea- 
captain  at  Nantes,  and  her  future  husband  had  made 
her  acquaintance  there  while  serving  gallantly  in 
Vende'e  amid  scenes  that  inspired  many  episodes  in 
his  son's  novel  "  Quatre-vingt-treize."  Later  he  dis- 
tinguished himself  in  Italy,  Corsica,  and  Spain;  but 
these  years  were  passed  by  Victor  with  his  mother  in 
Paris,  until  in  1811  General  Hugo  summoned  his 
family  to  join  him  in  Madrid,  where  he  had  risen  to 
high  rank  in  the  service  of  King  Joseph. 

A  year  had  hardly  passed  before  the  French  cause 
grew  desperate  in  Spain,  and  the  General  was  con- 
strained to  send  his  family  back  to  Paris  again ;  but 
the  months  that  he  had  spent  there  left  an  ineffaceable 
mark  on  the  impressionable  mind  of  the  boy.  That 
strange  people  filled  him  with  the  spirit  of  romance. 
"  Spain  showed  me  its  convents  and  bastiles, "  he 
says ;  "  Bourgos,  its  cathedrals  with  their  gothic  spires ; 
Irun,  its  roofs  of  wood ;  Vittoria,  its  towers ;  and  thou, 
Valladolid,  thy  palaces  of  families  proud  of  the  chains 
that  rust  in  their  courtyards.  My  recollections  budded 
in  my  heated  heart ;  I  went  about  singing  verses  with 
a  subdued  voice,  and  my  mother,  watching  in  secret  all 
my  steps,  wept,  smiled,  and  said,  '  A  fairy  speaks  to 
him  whom  we  see  not.' "  l  From  the  first  to  extreme 

1  L'Espagne  me  montrait  ses  convents,  ses  bastilles ; 
Burgos,  sa  cathedrale  aux  gothiques  aiguilles ; 
Irun,  ses  toits  de  bois ;  Vittoria,  ses  tours ; 
Et  toi,  Valladolid,  tes  palais  de  families, 
Fiers  de  laisser  rouiller  des  chaines  dans  leurs  cours. 
Mes  souvenirs  germaient  dans  mon  ame  echauffee, 
J'allais  chantaut  des  vers  d'uue  voix  etouffee ; 


THE   YOUNG   HUGO.  195 

'  old  age,  Hugo's  work  bears  unmistakable  marks  of  this 
year  in  Spain.  His  first  dramatic  success,  "  Hernani," 
and  his  last  dramatic  poem,  "  Torquemada,"  recall 
Spanish  towns  at  which  the  convoy  halted  on  his  re- 
turn ;  and  a  deformed  servant  whom  he  met  and  feared 
at  his  convent  school  in  Madrid  reappears  in  his  novels 
as  Habribrah,  as  Quasimodo,  and  as  Triboulet.1 

From  the  winter  of  1812  till  the  fall  of  the  Empire, 
Victor  was  with  his  mother  in  Paris,  living  in  Les 
Feuillan tines,  an  abandoned  convent  that  reappears  in 
"Les  Mise'rables."  The  Eestoration  caused  some 
estrangement  between  General  Hugo,  who  had  de- 
fended Thionville  with  desperate  heroism  against  the 
Allies,  and  his  wife,  always  a  Catholic  and  now  a  de- 
clared Koyalist,  who  breathed  more  freely  under  the 
Bourbons.  Victor  was  sent  to  school,  unwillingly 
it  seems,  for  he  recalls  with  passionate  tenderness  the 
happiness  of  his  home  nurture  in  the  mystic  associa- 
tions of  the  old  convent  and  its  beautiful  garden. 
"Woods  and  fields  make  the  education  of  all  great 
minds,"  he  said ;  and  this  free  life  "  made  blossom  every- 
where in  my  nature  that  pity  for  mankind,  sad  result 

Et  ma  mere  en  secret  observant  tous  mes  pas, 
Pleurait  et  souriait,  disant :  C'est  une  fee 
Qni  lui  parle  et  qu'on  ne  voit  pas. 

(Odes  et  ballades,  V.  ix.  3.) 

A  very  full  account  of  Hugo's  life  up  to  1843  is  "  V.  Hugo  raconte 
par  un  temoin  de  sa  vie,"  practically  an  autobiography,  in  which  the 
author,  unlike  the  Charles  V.  of  his  "  Hernani,"  "  se  regarde  toujours 
en  beau."  He  never  found  it  easy  to  tell  the  truth  about  himself,  at 
least  consecutively,  as  has  been  pitilessly  demonstrated  by  Eire,  V. 
Hugo  avant  1830,  and  V.  Hugo  apres  1830  (2  vols.). 

1  Hugo  describes  him  as  "a  humpbacked  dwarf,  with  a  scarlet 
face,  tight-curled  hair,  in  a  red  linen  vest,  with  blue  plush  breeches, 
yellow  stockings,  and  russet  shoes."  Many  lyrics,  especially  among 
the  "  Orientales,"  are  of  purely  Spanish  inspiration. 


196  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

hidden  beneath  so  many  causes,  that  comes  to  us  from 
the  contemplation  of  existence." 1  In  any  case  the  boy 
had  suffered  no  great  loss  by  delay,  for  he  speedily 
distinguished  himself  at  school,  and  was  already  busy 
with  poems,  —  "  follies  before  I  was  born,"  as  he  called 
them  in  later  years.  Among  these  was  an  epic  of 
Eoland  of  Eoncesvalles,  who  was  to  inspire  some  of 
the  noblest  verses  of  the  "  Legende  des  siecles."  Then 
there  was  a  "  Deluge "  in  Miltonic  style,  as  well  as 
plentiful  sketches  of  tragedies,  melodramas,  and  comic 
operas.  Forced  by  his  father  to  technological  studies 
that  he  abhorred,  he  wrote  in  his  diary  at  fourteen,  "  I 
wish  to  be  Chateaubriand  or  nothing,"  —  a  sentiment 
that  marks  at  once  his  ambition  and  his  epoch. 

While  still  at  school  and  but  fifteen,  Hugo  competed 
for  an  Academic  prize  with  a  poem  on  "  The  happiness 
that  study  procures  in  all  situations  of  life."  Hono- 
rable mention  was  awarded  to  his  three  hundred  verses ; 
and  thus,  though  subordinated  to  the  not  very  illus- 
trious Loyson  and  Santine,  he  won  the  notice  and 
patronage  of  some  Academicians  who  assisted  his  liter- 
ary beginnings.  Of  far  greater  influence  on  his  devel- 
opment, however,  was  his  growing  affiliation  with  the 
group  of  young  and  enthusiastic  aspirants  to  fame  who 
formed  the  Ce'nacle  of  1824.  It  was  under  their  stimu- 
lus that  he  wrote  his  first  novel,  "  Bug-Jargal,"  though 
he  did  not  cast  his  lot  fully  with  them  till  1826.  The 
story  was  afterward  remodelled ;  but  even  in  its  boyish 


1  Et  les  bois  et  les  champs,  du  sage  seul  compris 
Font  1'educatiou  de  tous  les  grands  esprits !  .  .  . 
Et  nous  ferons  germer  de  toutes  parts  en  lui 
Pour  Thomme,  triste  effet  perdu  sous  taut  de  causes, 
Cette  pitie'  qui  uait  du  spectacle  des  choses. 

(Les  Rayons  et  les  ombres,  xix.) 


THE   YOUNG   HUGO.  197 

form  *  it  shows  the  promise  of  some  of  his  most  strik- 
ing qualities.  It  has  the  same  close  juxtaposition  of 
the  tragic  and  the  grotesque  that  is  found  in  his  later 
work ;  the  same  love  of  the  moth  for  the  star  that  is 
the  mainspring  of  "  Kuy  Bias  "  and  "  Notre-Daine ; "  the 
same  chivalrous  honor  that  summons  Hernani  to  his 
death  ;  and  a  generous  share  of  those  "  moving  accidents 
by  flood  and  field,  of  hairbreadth  'scapes  in  the  immi- 
nent deadly  breach,  of  being  taken  by  the  insolent 
foe,"  and  of  the  vivid  descriptions  attendant  thereon, 
that  mark  "  Les  Mise'rables  "  and  "  Quatre-vingt-treize." 

The  scene  of  "  Bug-Jargal "  is  Hay ti ;  the  time  the 
insurrection  of  the  Blacks  in  1793 ;  the  hero  a  negro 
prince  and  slave,  whose  magnanimous  heart  is  won  by 
the  blue-blooded  charms  of  Marie,  the  daughter  of  a 
wealthy  planter  and  soon  to  be  the  wife  of  D'Auverney, 
an  officer,  and  the  narrator  of  the  tale.  To  rescue  her, 
even  for  his  rival,  this  chivalrous  African  devises  nu- 
merous feats  of  self-sacrificing  heroism,  and  crowns  all 
by  giving  his  life  for  his  love.  But  of  more  interest 
than  this  sentimental  slave  is  the  negro  kinglet  Biassou, 
the  savage  chief  of  the  rebels,  and  the  villanous  dwarf 
Habribrah,  whose  weird  end  as  he  is  swept  away  in  the 
torrent  of  a  cavernous  abyss  is  a  masterpiece  of  Ko- 
mantic  imagination,  worthy  to  take  a  place  beside  the 
famous  fight  with  the  devil-fish  in  "  The  Toilers  of  the 
Sea." 

But  during  these  early  years  the  tendency  of  Hugo's 
talent  is  toward  lyric  poetry  rather  than  fiction.  In 
1819  he  won  three  prizes  at  the  Jeux  Floraux  of  Tou- 
louse, —  annual  poetic  competitions,  such  as  are  still  held 
in  Wales  ;  and  his  odes  were  of  such  intrinsic  merit  as 
to  win  him  the  epithet  "  sublime  child  "  from  Soumet, 
1  Reprinted  in  "  V.  Hugo  raconte',"  ii.  181-223. 


198  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

or,  as  he  liked  to  think,  from  Chateaubriand  himself.1 
Thus  encouraged,  the  young  author,  in  spite  of  very  slen- 
der resources,  abandoned  his  technological  studies,  and, 
while  ostensibly  studying  law,  co-operated  in  founding 
a  literary  journal,  "  Le  Conservateur  littdraire,"  a  strange 
title  for  the  herald  of  Eomanticism.  But  though  this 
venture  came  at  an  auspicious  time  and  had  the  sup- 
port of  the  rising  genius  of  Lamartine,  he  was  soon 
obliged  to  abandon  the  costly  experiment.  A  few 
months  later  his  mother  died.  Then  his  father,  dis- 
gusted that  he  should  have  abandoned  his  profession, 
withdrew  his  allowance ;  and  between  losses  and  dep- 
rivations the  young  poet  was  reduced  for  a  year  to 
considerable  straits,  which  were  the  harder  to  bear  as 
he  was  impatient  to  marry  Adele  Toucher,  a  child- 
friend  of  the  Feuillan tines.  Reminiscences  of  these 
gloomy  days  and  of  a  duel  in  which  his  atrabilious  stub- 
bornness had  involved  him  linger  in  the  Marius  episodes 
of  "  Les  Mise'rables  "  and  in  the  duel  of  "  Marion  de 
Lorme." 

He  had  now  a  book  of  odes  ready  for  the  press ; 
but  no  publisher  would  take  it,  even  as  a  gift,  and  he 
could  not  afford  to  print  it  at  his  own  expense.  It  was 
due  to  the  generosity  of  his  brother  Abel  that  "  Odes 
et  poe*sies  diverses  "  appeared  in  1822.  The  book  paid 
expenses,  and  left  the  author  some  seven  hundred  francs. 
But  it  did  much  more  than  that,  for  it  attracted  the 
attention  of  King  Louis,  who  liked  to  think  himself  a 
patron  of  letters,  and  accorded  the  author  a  pension  of 
two  thousand  francs.  With  this  and  hope  Victor  mar- 
ried Adele  in  October,  1822 ;  and  his  courage  was  jus- 
tified by  a  domestic  life  happy  and  unclouded  to  its 
close. 

1  V.  Hugo  raconte,  ii.  235. 


THE   YOUNG   HUGO.  199 

These  early  poems  show  Hugo's  strength  and  weak- 
ness, but  each  in  a  still  undeveloped  form.  He  could 
not  have  heralded  his  future  career  as  a  writer  better 
than  by  such  brilliantly  rhetorical  lyrics,  for  both  the 
lyric  and  the  rhetorical  strain  ran  through  all  his  epics, 
his  dramas,  his  satires,  and  his  prose.  And  in  these 
very  first  notes  the  youth  of  twenty  shows  that  he 
knew  already  both  what  he  wanted  to  do  and  how  he 
proposed  to  do  it.  "  He  would  put  the  movement  of 
the  ode  in  ideas  rather  than  in  words,"  he  said ;  that 
is,  he  would  prefer  harmony  between  thought  and 
metre  to  symmetry  of  form,  neglect  of  which  was  the 
corner-stone  of  the  Romantic  "liberties."  But  in  his 
case  Genius  was  justified  of  her  child.  His  verses  sing 
themselves  to  the  attentive  ear  with  a  happy  concord 
of  sound  and  sense,  and  a  richness  of  rhythmic  melody 
that  till  then  had  been  approached  only  by  the  "Medi- 
tations" of  Lamartine.  Then,  too,  following  in  the  steps 
of  Chateaubriand,  Hugo  discarded  mythology,  with  all 
its  apparently  antiquated  apparatus,  and  made  his  ap- 
peal to  those  religious  sentiments,  universally  under- 
stood and  generally  shared,  that  Boileau  had  thought 
incapable  of  poetic  treatment.  But  Hugo  went  further 
than  Chateaubriand.  "  Poetry,"  he  declares  in  his 
preface  to  the  Odes  of  1822,  is  "  that  which  belongs  to 
the  inner  nature  of  all  things."  This  definition  made 
his  work  subjectively  individualistic,  sometimes  with 
more  artificiality  than  sincerity ;  and  though  we  see 
now  that  lyric  poetry  is  in  its  nature  subjective,  this 
position  challenged  in  the  France  of  1822  a  tradition 
venerable  by  two  centuries  of  abused  power.  However, 
the  verses  of  this  first  volume  hardly  illustrated  the 
new  position,  and  in  their  metrical  form  there  was  little 
to  attract  the  criticism  even  of  strict  Classicists. 


200  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

These  odes  breathe  the  ardent  royalism  that  he  had 
learned  at  his  mother's  knee,  and  an  equally  ardent  but 
less  clearly  denned  Catholicism,  —  partly  also  an  inheri- 
tance from  the  brigande  of  Nantes,  partly  no  doubt 
a  convention  necessary  for  a  young  man  who  would 
be  "  Chateaubriand  or  nothing."  In  "  La  Lyre  et  la 
harpe  " :  he  opposes  Christian  poetry  to  pagan  quite  as 
the  "  Genius  of  Christianity  "  had  done ;  his  "  Liberty  "  2 
is  that  in  which  Christ  has  set  us  free,  and  he  has  some 
not  wholly  perfunctory  praises  of  chastity  and  martyr- 
dom. He  tells  us  that  "  his  songs  fly  toward  G-od  as 
the  eagle  toward  the  sun,  for  to  the  Lord  I  owe  the 
gift  of  speech."  But,  after  all,  one  detects  less  dignity 
and  true  feeling  here  than  in  the  poems  that  throb  with 
political  passion,  always  intense  in  Hugo  through  all 
the  kaleidoscopic  changes  of  his  life.  Perhaps  the  high- 
water  mark  of  these  first  odes  is  in  the  closing  stanzas 
of  "  Buonaparte ; "  but  he  soon  surpassed  himself  in 
"  Les  Deux  iles  "  (1825),  and  the  superb  Ode  to  the 
Vendome  Column  written  in  1827  is  one  of  the  finest 
pieces  of  his  earlier  manner.3  But  the  Christian  odes 
not  only  lacked  the  majesty  of  these  political  verses, 
they  lacked  also  the  warm  tenderness  of  the  domestic 
poems  and  recollections  of  childhood,4  which  deepened 
with  the  birth  of  his  daughter  Leopoldine  (1826),  and 
remained  one  of  Hugo's  most  sympathetic  and  popular 
traits. 

A  year  after  the  first  odes  were  printed,  Hugo  again 
ventured  on  journalism  in  the  short-lived  "  Muse 
Francaise."  He  had  also  completed  a  novel,  but  it 
was  so  very  Eomantic  that  for  the  present  he  pre- 
ferred anonymous  publication.  This  was  "  Han  d'ls- 

1  Odes  iv.  2.  2  Odes  ii.  6. 

»  Odes  i.  11  ;  iii.  6,  7.  *  For  instance,  Odes  v.  9,  12,  17. 


THE   YOUNG   HUGO.  201 

lande,"  of  which  he  said  truly  that  the  only  thing 
in  it  based  on  personal  experience  was  the  love  of  a 
young  man,  arid,  the  only  thing  based  on  observation 
the  love  of  a  young  girl;  that  is  to  say,  it  was  the 
immediate  literary  result  of  his  betrothal  and  mar- 
riage. But  for  the  rest,  and  the  greater  part,  Hugo 
drew  on  the  fountain  of  imagination  that  had  flowed 
so  freely  in  "  Bug-Jargal."  The  scene  is  laid  in  far 
Norway,  where  Hugo  had  never  been,  and  the  central 
figure  is  a  monster  such  as  Hugo  had  never  seen. 
Han,  even  less  human  than  Biassou,  consorts  with  a 
polar  bear,  who  assists  the  energies  of  his  double  brain 
to  the  destruction  of  a  regiment  that  has  offended  him. 
Here,  as  in  "  Bug-Jargal,"  there  is  vivid  imagination, 
with  skill  in  the  narration  of  scenes  of  terror  and  feats 
of  breathless  daring;  but  both  stories  are  differen- 
tiated from  the  mere  tale  of  adventure  by  a  grotesque 
humor  that  gives  them  a  marked  individuality.  On 
the  other  hand,  the  pathos  is  forced  and  ineffective ; 
but  the  same  might  be  said  of  all  such  efforts  in  this 
generation,  which  exhibited  its  emotions  with  what 
seems  to  us  a  morbid  delight. 

Hugo's  creative  imagination  reappears,  as  free  and 
vigorous  but  more  refined  and  chastened,  in  the  "  New 
Odes  and  Ballads  "  of  1826.  Here  first  he  allied  him- 
self openly  with  the  Eomanticists,  attacked  the  cur- 
rent and  we  may  add  fundamental  restriction  of  the 
genres,  and  demanded  "  liberty  in  art,"  —  whatever  that 
may  mean.  In  practice  it  seems  to  have  amounted 
to  the  emancipation  of  his  lyric  individuality.  His 
versification  and  rhythm  already  begin  to  echo  his 
personality,1  and  several  poems  show  the  beginnings 

1  E.g.,  "Le  Pas  d'armes  du  roi  Jean"  and  "La  Chasse  du 
burgrave."  (Ballades  xi.,  xii.) 


202  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

of  that  sympathetic  study  of  the  mediaeval  mind  that 
is  associated  with  Eomanticism.1 

Hugo  now  held  the  first  place  among  the  younger 
poets.  The  king  had  increased  his  pension,  and  made 
him  a  member  of  the  Legion  of  Honor,  and  by  1827 
all  recognized  in  him  the  standard-bearer  of  the  move- 
ment. This  leadership  he  asserted  and  confirmed  by 
his  first  drama,  "  Cromwell,"  and  especially  by  its 
elaborate  preface,  full  of  dramaturgical  observations 
more  opportune  than  new,  for  they  had  been  timidly 
taught  by  Lemercier  in  France,  were  already  recog- 
nized in  England  as  essential  elements  in  the  Shak- 
sperean  drama,  and  had  been  deduced  with  convincing 
logic  by  Lessing  for  the  German  stage.  But  if  the  pref- 
ace to  "  Cromwell"  was  not  original,  it  was  very  fruit- 
ful, and  it  was  moreover  the  best  piece  of  French  prose 
that  the  century  had  yet  produced,  although  the  dog- 
matic emphasis  that  wraps  startling  assertions  in  an 
endless  train  of  brilliant  metaphors  does  not  always 
suffice  to  hide  the  writer's  superficiality  or  even  some- 
times his  ignorance. 

The  kernel  of  this  eloquent  outburst  appears  to  be 
that  literature  had  outlived  the  lyric  and  epic  forms 
and  had  reached  the  age  of  the  drama,  which,  because 
it  was  more  true  to  nature,  had  greater  power  to  move 
and  sway  the  hearts  and  minds  of  men.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  we  know  that  precisely  the  contrary  was  true,  — 
that  the  Romantic  movement  was  essentially  lyric, 
and  that  the  century  has  been  pre-eminently  lyric  in 
its  verse  and  epic  in  its  prose ;  but  Hugo  thought  "  the 
drama  the  only  complete  poetry  of  our  time,  the  only 
poetry  with  a  national  character."  To  give  this  "  com- 
plete poetry  "  scope,  the  stage  must  have  larger  liberty, 
1  E.  g.,  "  Une  Fee  >'  and  "  La  Ronde  du  sabbat." 


THE   YOUNG  HUGO.  203 

especially  in  subject;  the  tragic  and  comic  must  be 
mingled,  and  the  grotesque  placed  beside  the  sublime 
should  show,  as  in  Shakspere,  the  irony  of  destiny. 
He  did  not  aim,  as  La  Chausse'e  had  done  in  the  eigh- 
teenth century,  at  a  fusion  of  the  genres  but  at  an 
alternation,  and  so  far  as  this  tended  to  make  the  in- 
terest centre  in  character,  he  followed  Diderot,  though 
perhaps  unconsciously.  He  made  an  effective  plea 
also  for  the  extension  of  the  tragic  vocabulary,  the 
results  of  which  have  been  already  noted.  He  never 
departed,  however,  from  the  fundamental  conventions 
of  the  stage,  and  those  who  hailed  the  "  brute  and 
savage  nature "  of  his  realism  did  him  an  injustice. 
His  drama  is  quite  as  far  from  that  of  the  new 
Naturalists,  and  much  farther  from  a  natural  drama 
than  the  tragedies  of  Kacine  or  the  comedies  of 
Moliere. 

For  Hugo  was  never  a  dramatist ;  he  was  a  lyric 
poet  who  wrote  dramas.  The  psychological  develop- 
ment of  his  characters  is  extremely  weak.  Antithesis, 
pushed  to  the  verge  of  credibility  and  even  over  it,  is 
the  only  complexity  that  they  possess,  and  the  minor 
personages  have  not  even  that  factitious  interest. 
The  action  seems  in  constant  danger  of  stranding,  and 
is  indeed  kept  afloat  only  by  the  heroic  measures  that 
we  associate  with  the  melodrama.  It  is  a  little  sur- 
prising, after  the  oracular  declarations  of  the  preface, 
to  find  "Cromwell"  timid  in  its  treatment  of  the 
unities  of  time  and  place,  which  are  subordinate,  and 
rash  only  in  casting  away  the  fundamental  unity  of 
action.  The  scene  is  confined  to  thirty-three  hours  and 
to  London.  Such  unity  of  action  as  the  play  possesses 
hangs  about  the  question,  Will  the  Protector  be 
King  ?  a  question  posed  in  Act  L,  affirmed  in  Act  II., 


204  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

denied  in  Act  III.,  reaffirmed  with  hesitation  in  Act 
IV.,  and  denied  in  Act  V. 

Swinburne's  somewhat  hysterical  admiration  declared 
this  play  "  sufficient  to  establish  the  author's  fame  for 
all  ages  in  which  poetry  and  thought,  passion  and 
humor,  subtle  truth  of  character,  stately  perfection 
of  structure,  facile  force  of  dialogue,  and  splendid 
eloquence  of  style  continue  to  be  admired  and  en- 
joyed." l  But  surely  the  judicious  reader  —  if  haply 
readers  of  "  Cromwell "  can  be  called  judicious  —  will 
see  in  this  huge  mass,  whose  length,  though  not  that 
alone,  excluded  it  from  the  stage,  no  masterpiece 
of  any  kind,  but  rather  the  first  essay  of  a  man  of 
genius  who  has  felt  the  power  of  Corneille  and  Shak- 
spere  and  attempts  an  imitation  of  their  processes. 
Indeed,  whole  scenes  recall  passages  in  "Hamlet," 
"  Julius  Csesar,"  and  "  Macbeth ; "  and  the  would-be 
Corneillian  style  is  often  antiquated  and  forced,  while 
occasionally  it  falls  to  the  level  of  the  mock-heroic. 
What  is  most  interesting  to  note  here,  in  the  evolution 
of  the  drama,  is  the  great  number  of  persons  brought 
on  the  stage  contrary  to  French  tradition,  as  well 
as  the  cultivation  of  "  local  color,"  which  though,  as 
usual  with  the  Eomanticists,  untrue  to  fact,  is  vivid 
and  successfully  maintained. 

But  in  this  very  year  the  "Ode  to  the  Vendome 
Column "  should  have  shown  Hugo  that  his  strength 
and  that  of  Romanticism  lay  in  lyric  poetry.  It  struck 
the  key-note  of  the  best  work  of  his  prime,  and  it 
showed  also  that  the  glories  of  the  Napoleonic  legend 
were  beginning  to  dispel  the  prejudices  of  a  Royalist 
nurture  and  the  teachings  of  sober  reason.  Provoked 
by  an  insult  to  the  marshals  of  Napoleon,  it  was 

1  Victor  Hugo,  p.  11. 


THE   YOUNG   HUGO.  205 

written  while  his  blood  was  at  white  heat ;  but  if  the 
ode  bears  marks  of  emotion,  it  bears  none  of  haste. 
Such  lines  as  those  that  prophesy  how  "  Vende'e  shall 
sharpen  its  sword  on  the  monument  of  Waterloo,"  or 
recall  how  Germany  bears  printed  on  its  forehead 
"  the  sandal  of  Charlemagne,  the  spur  of  Napoleon," l 
had  been  till  then  approached  only  by  Corneille.  And 
this  ode  is  no  isolated  flight,  though  before  Hugo  had 
completed  another  volume  of  lyrics  he  turned  once 
more  to  the  drama  and  produced  "  Amy  Eobsart,"  a 
play  taken  from  an  episode  in  Walter  Scott's  "  Kenil- 
worth,"  which  failed  on  the  stage  and  was  not  printed 
till  many  years  later.  He  wrote  also  "  Marion  de 
vLorme,"  which  the  censorship  would  not  suffer  to  be 
either  acted  or  printed,  thanks  to  a  fancied  allusion  to 
the  then  reigning  Charles  X. ;  and  so  it  happened  that 
"  Cromwell "  was  followed  not  by  works  that  only  the 
fame  of  their  author  preserves  from  oblivion,  but  by 
"  Les  Orientales,"  one  of  the  most  original  of  all  his 
volumes  of  verse,  —  a  collection  that  Brunetiere  called 
"the  gymnastics  of  a  talent  in  training,  studies  in 
design,  color,  and  speed;"  while  Swinburne  pronounced 
it  "the  most  musical  and  many-colored  volume  that 
ever  had  glorified  the  language,"  though  the  careful 
reader  will  not  seldom  find  the  mark  of  Eomantic 
artificiality  where  he  sought  the  mint-stamp  of  genuine 
poet-gold. 

Hugo's  Orient  is  that  of  Byron  and  Ali  Pasha,  but  it 

1  Tout  s'arme,  et  la  Vendee  aiguisera  son  glaive 
Sur  la  pierre  de  Waterloo 


L'histoire  .  .  . 

Montre  empreints  aux  deux  fronts  du  vautour  d'AUemagne 
La  sandale  de  Charlemagne, 
L'eperon  de  Napole'on.     (Odes,  III.  vii.  4,) 


206  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

is  also  the  Moorish  Orient  of  Spain,  some  breath  of 
which  lingered  in  his  recollections  of  childhood ;  most 
of  all,  however,  it  is  the  Orient  of  his  imagination.  On 
the  whole,  the  Spanish  pieces  are  the  truest  and  hest ; 
but  "  Les  Djinns,"  the  most  remarkable  single  poem 
in  the  volume  and  one  of  the  most  striking  pieces  of 
metrical  art  in  the  world,  is  more  Turkish  than  Mau- 
resque.  "  Le  Voile,"  too,  an  Albanian  tale  of  jealous 
family  honor,  is  astonishingly  brilliant  in  its  render- 
ing of  a  purely  fictitious  local  color.  But  in  "  Voeu  " 
and  in  "  Sara  la  baigneuse  "  there  is  a  plaintive  delicacy 
and  a  luxurious  joy  of  girlish  life  that  strike  a  more 
realistic  Spanish  note.  As  a  piece  of  riotous  fancy,  the 
ode  "Fire  in  the  Sky,"  a  dance  of  Sodom  and  Gomor- 
rah whirling  to  damnation,  surpasses  in  terror  as  it 
does  in  art  the  prose  of  "  Han "  or  of  "  Bug-Jargal." 
Very  striking  and  with  a  touch  of  philosophic  sym- 
bolism is  "  Mazeppa,"  borne  away  in  a  rush  of  des- 
tiny on  his  fiery  horse,  as  a  youth  by  his  genius, 
but  overcoming  and  conquering  at  last.  Yet  these 
word-pictures  are  fruits  for  whose  enjoyment  the 
foreigner  must  strive  and  climb.  Let  us  pass  to 
that  which,  though  less  exquisite,  hangs  on  lower 
branches. 

The  "Orientales"  were  followed  by  "  Hernani,"  a 
drama  not  often  acted,  but  still  read  by  all  who  care 
for  the  history  of  the  stage  or  for  French  literature, 
because  it  marks  the  triumph  of  Romanticism,  —  a 
triumph  extorted  from  the  Bourbon  dynasty  only  a 
few  months  before  they  went  hence  to  be  seen  no  more. 
"  Hernani,"  as  has  been  said,  was  not  the  first  Romantic 
drama,  but  it  stood  for  a  principle,  as  Dumas '  "  Henri 
III."  had  not  done.  The  story  of  the  conflict  over  it 
has  often  been  told,  but  by  none  more  graphically  than 


THE   YOUNG  HUGO.  207 

by  Gautier,  its  protagonist.1  The  play  had  been  ac- 
cepted by  the  Theatre  Frangais  in  October,  1829 ;  but  it 
took  nearly  six  months  to  overcome  the  opposition  of 
individual  prejudice  and  Academic  tradition.  Delay 
only  heated  the  passions  of  both  sides ;  and  it  was  with 
confident  though  calculating  generalship  that  Hugo 
published  his  determination  to  employ  no  claque  of 
hired  applauders,  for  by  this  he  made  the  play  a  stand- 
ard of  battle  around  which  every  Eomanticist  might 
fight  for  the  cause  of  individual  emancipation.  He 
thus  secured  a  devoted  band  of  enthusiastic  young  men 
who  delighted  to  enflame  classical  prejudices,  not  alone 
by  their  views,  but  by  their  clothes.  Historical  is  the 
garb  of  Gautier,  who  led  his  cohort  to  the  first  per- 
formance in  green  trousers,  a  scarlet  vest,  black  coat 
trimmed  with  velvet,  and  an  overcoat  of  gray  with  green 
satin  lining,  the  whole  set  off  by  long  wavy  curls. 
Among  his  fellows  were  Balzac  the  novelist,  Delacroix 
the  painter,  Berlioz  the  composer,  and  many  lesser 
champions  of  "  liberty "  in  the  liberal  arts.  The  op- 
position was  more  numerous  and  hardly  less  intense. 
Unreasoning  support  was  met  with  equally  unreason- 
ing condemnation;  and  from  February  26  to  June  5, 
1830,  the  battle  raged  nightly,  till  there  was  not  a 
verse  that  had  not  at  some  time  been  applauded  or 
hissed.  The  result,  if  not  a  victory  for  "Hernani," 
was  a  victory  for  all  that  it  represented.  The  fetters 
of  the  unities,  as  Boileau  understood  them,  were  broken. 
No  further  organized  effort  was  made  to  resist  the 
retrograde  evolution  of  the  Eomantic  drama  to  its 

o 

collapse  with  Hugo's  "  Burgraves  "  in  1843. 

Metrically  and  stylistically  "Hernani"  was  epoch- 

1  Histoire  du  romantisme.     See  also  Paul  Albert,  Les  Origines  du 
romantisme,  and  Coppe'e,  La  Bataille  d'Hernani. 


208  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

making.  Hugo  was  far  more  radical  here  than  in  his 
odes,  and  he  boasts  justly  of  his  services  in  restoring 
the  mot  propre,  the  concrete  noun,  to  a  place  of  honor. 
Now  first,  as  he  says,  what  Delille  and  his  fellows  would 
have  called  the  "  olfactories "  became  a  nose,  "  the 
long  golden  fruit "  a  pear ;  he  "  crushed  the  spirals  of 
paraphrase,"  and  "said  to  Vaugelas,  You  are  only  a 
jaw-bone," l  Then,  too,  his  prosody  was  here  more 
free,  —  perhaps  as  a  result  of  his  study  of  Goethe's 
alexandrines  in  the  second  part  of  "Faust,"  which 
Hugo  read  at  this  time.  But  as  a  drama  whether  of 
plot  or  of  character  the  play  was  fatally  weak.  Since 
Schiller's  "  Robbers,"  all  outlaws  had  been  magnani- 
mous ;  but  Hernani  had  a  pundonor  that  even  Castil- 
ians  found  exaggerated.  Hernani  owes  his  life  to 
Don  Ruy  Gomez,  and  has  promised  to  hold  it  at  his 
call.  Both  love  Dona  Sol,  who,  as  a  Romantic  heroine, 
naturally  prefers  the  bandit  to  the  duke.  But  as  Her- 
nani is  about  to  enjoy  the  fruition  of  his  love,  his  rival 
recalls  his  promise  by  a  signal  on  the  horn,  and  honor 
forces  the  bridegroom  to  take  the  poison  that  his 
bride  generously  shares. 

This  close  has  much  pathos,  but  it  is  rather  elegiac 

1  J'ai  dit  a  la  narine:  Et  mais!  tu  n'est  qu'un  nez! 
J'ai  dit  au  long  fruit  d'or:  Mais  tu  n'est  qu'une  poire! 
J'ai  dit  a  Vaugelas  :  Tu  n'es  qu'une  machoire!  .  .  . 
J'ai  de  la  periphrase  ^crase*  les  spirales.    (Contemplations,  I.  vii.) 
An  example  of  these  "  spirals  "  may  not  be  without  interest.     Du 
Belloy,  in  his  "  Siege  de  Calais,"  which  a  contemporary  critic  calls 
"  one  of  the  two  most  lachrymose  successes  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury" (its  date  is  1765),  wants  to  say  that  dog's  meat  was  dear;  he 
says  it  thus  :  — 

Le  plus  vil  aliment,  re*but  de  la  misere, 

Mais  aux  derniers  abois  ressource  terrible  et  chere, 

De  la  fidelite  respectable  soutien, 

Manque  a  Tor  prodigue"  du  riche  citoyen. 


THE   YOUNG   HUGO.  209 

than  dramatic.  Indeed,  Hugo  is  never  as  successful  in 
passages  of  love  or  humor  as  in  rhetorical  eloquence 
and  in  satire.  So  here  the  crown  of  the  drama  is  the 
long  monologue  of  Charles  V.  at  the  tomb  of  Charle- 
magne, and  one  of  the  most  striking  passages  is  the 
description  of  a  series  of  portraits ;  but  neither  mono- 
logue nor  description  advances  the  action,  nor  does  the 
amorous  dialogue  of  the  closing  scene,  which  owes  its 
interest  to  the  epic  strife  of  implacable  hatred  and 
undying  love.  It  is  quite  true  that  this  strife  is 
founded  on  a  situation  strained  and  dramatically  un- 
real ;  but  the  same  stricture  would  apply  to  the  whole 
Eomantic  drama,  not  alone  in  France,  but  also  in 
Germany. 

To  the  Naturalistic  mind  much  of  the  sentiment  of 
"Hernani"  has  become  mawkish,  and  many  of  the 
tirades  seem  mere  beating  the  air.  The  conventions 
of  Italian  opera  may  maintain  the  popularity  of  Verdi's 
"Ernani;"  but  Hugo's  play  has  ceased  to  attract  the 
great  public  of '  the  stage,  and  it  met  with  but  a  cold 
reception  at  its  recent  revival.  The  theatrical  public 
has  not  the  same  literary  training  as  the  reading  pub- 
lic, and,  in  the  nature  of  the  case,  it  can  neither  dwell 
on  what  it  enjoys,  nor  pass  lightly  over  the  foibles 
and  weakness  of  Eomantic  exaggeration.  But  if  the 
cultured  reader  makes  the  Eomantic  equation  at  the 
outset,  and  does  not  judge  the  work  by  strictly  dra- 
matic standards,  he  will  not  fail  to  feel  the  charm  of 
a  generous  warmth  of  emotion,  a  throbbing  overflow- 
ing life  that  thrills  through  all,  and  he  may  summon  in 
vain  his  memories  of  Corneille  to  find  a  scene  where 
tragic  admiration  is  so  nobly  roused  as  by  the  emperor 
in  the  cathedral  vaults  of  Aix-la-Chapelle,  as  he  stands 
by  the  tomb  of  the  great  Charlemagne. 

14 


210  MODEEN   FEENCH  LITEEATUEE. 

It  will  be  clear  that  "  Hernani "  lacks  unity  of  action. 
Precisely  the  best  scenes  have  no  connection  with  the 
central  situation.  The  whole  fifth  act  might  be  spared.1 
Now,  the  cause  of  this  lack  of  unity  in  action  is  clear, 
and  a  recognition  of  it  will  help  in  judging  Hugo's 
other  dramas.  Hugo  has  always  a  thesis  at  heart,  a 
part  of  his  own  individuality  to  display ;  and  he  cares 
more  for  this  than  for  the  development  of  character 
or  dramatic  action.  Therefore  he  tends  constantly  to 
exchange  the  dramatic  for  the  lyric  or  declamatory 
strain.  Therefore,  more  and  more  with  each  succeed- 
ing drama,  his  characters  become  symbols,  till  at  last 
in  "  Les  Burgraves  "  they  are  proclaimed  by  the  author 
himself  to  be  such.  Therefore,  in  every  play  situations 
are  laboriously  contrived,  scenes  and  even  acts  are 
crudely  inserted,  that  Hugo  may  declaim  behind  the 
mask  of  his  hero.  And  it  is  noteworthy  that  it  is  just 
these,  the  most  undramatic  passages,  that  are  best 
worth  remembering. 

Since  the  virtues  and  vices  of  "  Hernani "  reappear 
in  all  the  dramas  of  Hugo's  first  period,  it  is  convenient 
to  treat  them  together,  that  we  may  reserve  for  the 
close  his  lyrics  in  verse  and  in  prose.  He  had  said,  in 
a  preface  to  "  Hernani,"  that  this  "  was  only  the  first 
stone  of  an  edifice  that  existed  complete  in  his  mind." 
Only  the  whole  would  show  the  value  and  appropriate- 
ness of  this  drama,  as  of  a  Moorish  porch  to  a  Gothic 
cathedral.  There  is  a  certain  truth  in  his  antithesis. 

1  This  was  the  main  point  of  "  N,  I,  Ni,"  one  of  the  many  parodies  of 
the  time.  After  the  fourth  act,  at  the  first  performance,  the  spectators, 
abetted  no  doubt  by  the  claque,  prepared  to  leave  the  house,  when  the 
manager  appeared  before  the  curtain  and  said  :  "  Gentlemen,  perhaps 
you  thought  the  play  over.  Any  one  would  have  thought  so ;  but  there 
is  another  act,  for  the  second  and  true  denouement."  See  Eire,  op. 
cit.  p.  502. 


THE   YOUNG  HUGO.  211 

"  Hernani "  is  more  distinctly  Spanish  in  its  uniform 
tone,  less  Gothic  in  its  contrasts  of  fair  and  foul,  tragic 
and  comic,  grotesque  and  sublime,  than  any  of  the 
plays  that  followed  it;  more  even  than  the  earlier 
"  Marion  de  Lorme,"  to  which  the  Kevolution  of  July 
now  opened  the  theatre. 

Though  one  cannot,  with  Dumas,  regard  this  play 
as  Hugo's  best,  it  is  in  many  ways  the  most  interesting 
of  his  dramas.  The  scene  is  the  Paris  of  Louis  XIII. 
and  of  Eichelieu;  the  subject,  rehabilitation  of  the 
courtesan  Marion  by  her  true  love  for  Didier,  the 
rather  dubious  hero  of  the  play,  a  sort  of  rechauffe  of 
Kene*,  pessimistically  sentimental  and  as  absolutely 
foreign  to  the  age  of  Louis  XIII.  as  to  ours.  Didier 
has  been  involved  in  a  duel,  and  is  sentenced  to  execu- 
tion ;  but  Marion  saves  him,  placating  the  judge  by  the 
sacrifice  of  her  painfully  regained  virtue,  preferring 
the  life  of  her  lover  to  his  esteem.  He,  however, 
spurns  her  sacrifice,  and  will  not  be  saved  at  such  a 
price.  So  ended  the  "  Marion  de  Lorme "  of  1830. 
Later  Merime'e  persuaded  Hugo  to  soften  the  conclu- 
sion by  an  exquisitely  pathetic  scene  in  which  Marion 
and  Didier  take  leave  of  each  other  forever. 

Such  a  drama  can  have  little  charm  for  English 
taste,  and  the  beauties  of  the  execution  have  never 
won  it  a  wide  circle  of  readers  among  us.  In  France, 
however,  "  Marion  "  became  the  mother  of  a  numerous 
family  of  dramas  and  novels  that  dwelt  with  morbid 
delight  on  the  possible  reclamation  to  purity  of  mind 
and  heart  of  fallen  women  by  love.  At  first  the 
emotional  generosity  of  the  Eomantic  spirit  caused 
the  balance  to  incline  toward  a  charity  wider  even 
than  Hugo's ;  but  after  a  quarter  of  a  century  of 
ladies  with  and  without  camellias,  a  more  sober  mind 
returned  with  Augier's  "  Mariage  d'Olympe." 


212  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

It  has  been  already  said  that  the  duel  in  "  Marion  " 
was  taken  from  the  experience  of  the  struggling  poet. 
Traces  of  his  father's  campaign  in  Vende'e  can  be 
found  in  all  his  longer  works  for  the  next  three  years. 
During  the  rage  of  that  civil  strife  a  Eepublican  sol- 
dier returning  from  service  on  the  Ehine  had  been 
shot  by  an  ambushed  peasant,  who,  when  he  plundered 
the  corpse  of  the  murdered  man,  discovered  his  own 
son.  Then  the  mother  took  her  own  life,  and  the 
father  gave  himself  up  to  the  Eepublicans  with  the 
certainty  of  a  speedy  execution.  This  idea,  a  beloved 
child  unwittingly  killed  by  a  parent,  forms  the  tragic 
conclusion  of  "  Notre-Dame,"  and  reappears  in  the 
dramas  "  Le  Roi  s'amuse  "  and  "  Lucrece  Borgia." 

"  Le  Roi  s'amuse  "  is  a  drama  striking  in  itself  and 
in  the  prominence  that  it  gives  to  the  Gothic  inter- 
mingling of  tragic  and  grotesque,  as  of  the  saints  and 
imps  on  a  cathedral  tower.  The  plot  of  the  play  is 
familiar  through  Verdi's  opera  "  Rigoletto  ;  "  but  though 
it  appeared  under  the  more  liberal  censorship  of  the 
Orleanists,  it  shared  the  fate  of  "  Marion,"  being  pro- 
hibited after  a  single  performance  by  the  King,  who 
thought  he  discerned  in  it  allusions  to  his  father, 
Philippe  Egalite',  of  Revolutionary  ill-fame,  —  allusions 
that  were  not  nattering,  as  indeed  how  should  they 
be  ?  But  the  royal  decree  revealed  the  poet  in  a 
new  and  very  congenial  capacity.  In  the  legal  pro- 
ceedings that  ensued,  he  made  an  appeal  for  the 
liberty  of  the  press  that  showed  him  without  a  living 
peer  as  an  emotional  orator.  Whether  "Le  Roi 
s'amuse"  would  have  succeeded  in  1832  we  cannot 
know.  On  the  modern  stage  it  had  the  same  respect- 
ful but  lukewarm  reception  that  fell  to  "Hernani/' 
and  for  the  same  reasons. 


THE   YOUNG  HUGO.  213 

But  though  its  extravagance  stands  in  the  way  of 
its  present  success,  "Le  Eoi  s'amuse"  is  well  worth 
careful  reading ;  for  it  is  perhaps  the  most  Hugoesque 
of  all  his  dramas.  The  play  suggests  manifold  points 
of  comparison,  and  nearly  as  many  of  contrast,  with 
Lessing's  "  Emilia  Galotti."  We  are  shown  King 
Francis  I.,  rich,  careless,  sparing  neither  the  feelings 
nor  the  rights  of  any  in  his  reckless  hunt  for  pleasure, 
whose  favorite  jingling  rhyme, 

Souvent  femme  varie, 
Bien  fol  qui  s'y  fie, 

is  the  apt  expression  of  his  easy  virtue.  He  is  not 
bad  nor  malicious,  only  thoughtless  and  libertine. 
In  his  wanton  humor  his  eye  falls  on  the  fair 
daughter  of  his  deformed  dwarf,  Triboulet,  who 
combines  with  a  museum  of  vices  the  one  virtue  of 
passionate  love  for  his  child,  —  a  love  that  Hugo  at- 
tributes to  this  toy  and  sport  of  royal  favor  precisely 
because  no  one  would  ever  associate  it  with  him. 
Triboulet  discovers  the  king's  fancy,  and,  frantic  with 
paternal  jealousy,  determines  to  kill  him.  But  his 
daughter  immolates  herself  to  save  her  royal  lover. 
Triboulet's  accomplices  sew  her  body  in  a  sack  and 
cast  her  through  a  window.  He  stands  below  to 
gloat  over  his  victim ;  but  just  as  he  prepares  to 
throw  the  body  into  the  river,  he  is  startled  by  hear- 
ing the  king  himself  pass  by,  humming  his  familiar  air. 
And  so  the  mimic  world  wags  from  utter  frivolity  and 
ferocity  to  extremes t  misery,  as  the  awful  truth  dawns 
on  the  father;  and  the  curtain  falls  on  her  unveiled 
corpse,  and  Triboulet  lying  in  a  swoon  beside  her. 

Here  contrast  is  pushed  to  the  uttermost ;  the  most 
generous  and  exalted  sentiments  are  put  in  the  mouth 
of  Triboulet,  just  as  they  had  been  attributed  the  year 


214  MODERN  FKENCH   LITERATURE. 

before  to  his  counterpart,  Quasimodo,  the  hunchback 
of  "  Notre-Danie,"  in  a  way  that  could  not  but  make 
the  judicious  grieve,  though  before  this  tragedy  of 
paternity  both  criticism  and  parody  were  silent. 

In  the  preface  to  "  Cromwell "  Hugo  had  pronounced 
verse  the  fit  vehicle  for  dramatic  expression.  With 
"Lucrezia  Borgia"1  he  turned  in  1833  to  prose;  and 
into  that  more  facile  form  he  cast  in  the  following 
years  "  Marie  Tudor  "  and  "  Angelo."  This  concession 
to  Naturalism  was  received  with  varied  feelings  by  his 
fellow  Eomanticists.2  It  is  clear,  however,  that  given 
the  Romantic  drama  as  Hugo  conceived  it,  with  its 
exalted  and  sublimated  passion,  its  exaggerated  emo- 
tions and  antitheses,  and  its  fundamental  distortion  of 
nature,  its  best  medium  will  be  verse,  because  it,  too,  is 
artificial ;  just  as  prose  is  the  fit  medium  for  the  social 
comedy  of  our  day.  But  though  their  form  was  an  aes- 
thetic error,  these  prose  dramas  have  intrinsic  interest, 
and  they  served  also  as  helpful  precedents  to  writers 
who  would  have  found  the  alexandrine  a  clog  even  with 
the  new  suppleness  that  Hugo  had  given  to  it. 

Into  the  plots  of  these  plays  we  need  not  enter. 
"Lucrezia  Borgia"  broadens  the  charitable  mantle  of 
"  Marion,"  to  show  how  maternal  love  may  redeem  the 
deepest  moral  obliquity.  Here  also  the  parent  is  the 
unconscious  cause  of  the  child's  death,  and  only  its 
name  connects  the  drama  with  history.  One  notes, 
however,  with  pain  a  concession  to  the  melodrama,  a 
sensational  "supping  full  of  horrors,"  to  tickle  the 
ears  of  the  groundlings.  The  curtain  fell  amid  popular 
applause  on  eight  corpses  ;  but  sager  criticism  saw  from 

1  This  play  is  the  foundation  of  Donizetti's  opera  of  like  name. 

2  Gautier  loyally  averred  that  Hugo's  prose  was  as  good  as  his  verse ; 
but  only,  he  added,  because  it  was  his  prose. 


THE   YOUNG  HUGO.  215 

the  first  that  there  was  here  a  marked  fall,  both  ethical 
and  aesthetic,  from  the  standard  of  "  Marion  "  or  even  of 
"  Hernani."  And  in  the  dramatic  action,  also,  there 
was  more  wanton  strength  than  supple  deftness. 

"  Marie  Tudor  "  showed  a  further  decline,  for  it  was 
not  even  a  good  melodrama.  Hugo  says  he  wished  to 
show  a  queen  who  should  be  "great  in  her  royalty 
and  true  in  her  womanhood."  But  his  Mary  is  a  cari- 
cature, and  not  a  dramatic  one,  and  the  spectator's 
suspense  is  of  a  kind  that  cannot  be  dignified  with 
the  name  of  tragic.  The  play  lacks  unity,  and  seldom 
deviates  into  scenes  of  interest.1  "Angelo"  is  better 
constructed,  but  its  scope  is  too  all-embracing.  This 
drama  purports  to  have  no  less  a  mission  than  to 
present  "universal  femininity"  in  two  types,  "the 
woman  in  society  and  the  woman  out  of  society,"  and 
in  two  men,  to  show  "  all  the  relations  that  man  can 
have  with  woman  on  the  one  hand,  with  society  on 
the  other."  Such  a  programme  might  seem  to  make 
criticism  superfluous ;  and,  indeed,  the  plot,  melodra- 
matic a  outrance,  with  its  sleeping  draughts  and 
poisons,  marks,  like  the  caverns  and  secret  doors  of 
other  plays,  the  author's  lack  of  dramatic  sense.  It 
may  be  true  that  as  sensational  plays  "  Angelo "  and 
"Lucrezia"  are  as  good  as  "Hernani"  and  "Le  Eoi 
s'amuse;"  but  that  merit  would  give  none  of  them 
more  than  a  transient  life.  When  the  charm  of  form 
in  poetic  dialogue  and  declamation  was  taken  away, 
what  remained  lost  nearly  all  its  purely  literary  value. 
Hugo  had  overestimated  the  place  of  the  stage  as  a 
pulpit  for  ethical  preaching,  or  at  least  he  had  over- 
estimated his  power  as  a  preacher. 

1  "V.  Hugo  raconte,"  iii.  183  sqq.,  contains  a  painfully  fatuous  ao 
count  of  the  reception  of  "  Marie  Tudor." 


216  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Soon  after  Hugo  had  freed  his  bosom  of  this  peril- 
ous stuff',  there  bloomed  in  his  hand  a  little  flower, 
a  lyric  drama,  slight  and  frail,  almost  forgotten  to-day, 
—  his  "  Esmeralda,"  an  exquisite  libretto  for  an  opera 
taken  from  his  own  "  Notre-Dame."  Perhaps  this 
return  to  the  metrical  form,  slight  though  it  was, 
may  have  aided  in  persuading  him  that  his  dramatic 
aspirations  required  the  aid  of  his  poetic  genius;  for 
he  returned  to  verse  in  "Euy  Bias,"  which,  though  far 
from  faultless,  ranks  next  to  "Hernani"  in  popular 
esteem,  and  above  it  in  the  opinion  of  some  critics. 
It  certainly  shows  his  dramatic  theories  in  their  ex- 
treme development.  Nowhere  are  the  contrasts  be- 
tween grave  and  gay,  tragic  and  grotesque,  pushed  to 
such  violent  and  rapid  alternation  as  here,  both  by 
precept  in  the  preface  and  by  practice  in  the  play. 
In  his  own  words :  "  The  two  opposite  electricities  of 
tragedy  and  comedy  meet,  and  the  spark  that  darts 
between  them  is  'Ruy  Bias.'" 

In  his  preface  the  author  seeks,  as  usual,  to  explain 
the  esoteric  meaning  of  his  piece ;  but  if  he  succeeds  in 
making  himself  clear,  it  is  only  by  making  his  play 
fundamentally  ridiculous,  however  admirable  its  iso- 
lated parts  may  be.  He  wishes,  he  tells  us,  to  show 
how  society  has  changed  in  Spain  since  Hernani's  day ; 
how  beneath  the  nobility  "  a  shadowy  something  stirs, 
great,  sombre,  unknown,  —  the  people.  The  people, 
that  possesses  the  future  but  riot  the  present,  orphaned, 
poor,  intelligent,  and  strong ;  placed  very  low,  aspiring 
very  high  ;  with  the  mark  of  servitude  on  its  back,  and 
in  its  heart  the  premeditations  of  genius ;  the  people, 
valet  of  great  lords,  and  in  its  abjection  loving  the  sole 
image  in  this  crumbling  society  that  represents  to  it 
authority,  charity,  fruitf illness,"  —  of  such  a  people  his 
Ruy  Bias  is  to  be  the  type  and  symbol. 


THE   YOUNG   HUGO.  217 

This  promises  much ;  but  the  briefest  sketch  of  the 
story  will  show  to  every  attentive  reader 1  the  most 
complete  lack  of  intelligence,  of  truth  and  life.  The 
plot  is  farcical,  and  the  attempt  to  build  a  tragic  action 
on  it  lacks  common-sense.  "  The  Greeks  and  Turks 
are  nearer  to  us,  both  by  their  acts  and  sentiments,  than 
the  Spaniards  or  the  French  of  Victor  Hugo."  And 
yet  there  is  in  "  Euy  Bias  "  a  superb  poetic  evocation 
of  a  decaying  monarchy,  and  the  monologue  of  the 
lackey  prime-minister  on  the  glories  of  Charles  V.  is  a 
piece  of  declamation  worthy  to  rank .  with  that  of 
Charles  himself  at  the  tomb  of  Charlemagne.  But 
these  admirable  passages  would  be  as  appropriate  in 
"  Les  Chatiments  "  or  "  La  Le'gende  des  siecles  "  as  in  this 
drama,  and  when  we  disengage  the  story  itself  from  its 
poetic  adornments,  we  find  ourselves  in  a  maze  of  pueril- 
ities which  it  is  quite  unnecessary  to  unravel  here. 

The  truly  fantastic  morality  of  a  play  where  a  lackey 
loves  a  queen  and  wins  the  pardon  of  his  presumption 
by  poisoning  himself,  will  more  than  counterbalance  in 
sober  minds  its  superb  eloquence.  Yet  it  would  be 
unjust  to  say  with  Vinet  that  "  Euy  Bias  is  a  jest,  a 
parody,  with  no  idea,  no  inspiration,  and  no  interest." 
On  the  contrary,  in  the  first  act  there  is  more  skill  of 
dramatic  structure  than  Hugo  had  ever  shown,  and  the 
action  is  set  in  motion  with  remarkable  celerity  and 
deftness.  The  second  act  does  indeed  fail  to  fulfil  this 
dramatic  promise,  but  it  gives  us  an  exquisite  idyl  of 
passion  roused  in  a  neglected  heart  by  the  mystery  of 
an  unknown  lover.  In  the  third  act  the  absurdity 
of  the  climax  is  redeemed  by  most  eloquent  declama- 
tion. The  fourth  act  the  critic  may  indeed  feel  con- 
strained to  abandon  as  a  dramaturgical  error.  Hugo 

1  Cp.  Lanson,  p.  959,  who  makes  substantially  the  same  statement. 


218  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

intends  a  farcical  interlude,  but  his  wit  is  too  elephantine 
in  its  gambols.  But  in  the  fifth  act  one's  impatience 
at  the  sentimentality  of  the  lackey  and  the  queen  is 
mollified  by  lyric  passages  of  great  pathos  and  lines  of 
true  Corneillian  force ;  the  outpourings  of  a  genius  that, 
whatever  the  form  of  its  expression — song,  drama, 
novel,  or  essay  —  was  always  lyric  in  its  essence.  Thus 
regarded,  "  Euy  Bias  "  is  the  best  of  Hugo's  dramas. 

It  remains  to  speak  of  "  Les  Burgraves,"  which  closes 
the  brief  course  of  the  Eomantic  theatre.  Hugo  may 
have  grown  weary,  after  "  Ruy  Bias,"  of  forcing  his 
genius  into  this  uncongenial  channel;  for  five  years 
separate  these  plays,  during  which  he  published  a  vol- 
ume of  verse  and  an  account  of  a  journey  to  Germany 
in  his  peculiar  lyric  vein.  This  journey  furnished  the 
scene  and  in  some  measure  the  inspiration  of  "  Les 
Burgraves."  It  does  not  add  to  the  eagerness  with 
which  the  reader  essays  this  drama  of  four  genera- 
tions to  be  told  in  an  oracular  preface  that  it  is  "a 
philosophic  abstraction  .  .  .  the  palpitating  and  com- 
plete symbol  of  expiation ; "  nor  is  there  much  hope  of 
dramatic  unity  in  a  work  that  is  proclaimed  to  be 
"  laughter  and  tears,  good  and  evil,  high  and  low,  fa- 
tality, providence,  genius,  chance,  society,  the  world, 
nature,  life,"  above  all  which,  the  confident  author  con- 
tinues, "  you  feel  that  something  grand  is  soaring."  He 
proposes  to  give  a  complete  picture  of  the  German 
middle  ages  as  his  fancy  conjures  it  before  him.  "  His- 
tory, legend,  tale,  reality,  nature,  the  family,  love, 
naive  manners,  savage  faces,  princes,  soldiers,  adven- 
turers, kings,  patriarchs  as  in  the  Bible,  hunters  of 
men  as  in  Homer,  Titans  as  in  ^Eschylus,  crowded  all 
at  once  on  the  dazzled  imagination  of  the  author,"  who 
seems  to  seek  to  recon vey  to  the  spectator  his  own 
mental  confusion. 


THE   YOUNG  HUGO.  219 

To  trace  the  chain  of  sensational  effects  by  which 
this  forlorn  hope  of  the  Eomantic  drama  sought  to 
galvanize  the  interest  of  a  weary  public  would  be  alike 
tedious  and  unprofitable.  One  is  shown  a  stolen  child, 
a  son  who  just  misses  being  a  parricide,  a  girl  in  a  trance 
as  in  "  Angelo,"  coffins  on  the  stage  as  in  "  Lucrezia  ; " 
there  is  a  cavern,  too,  and  an  imperial  ghost  to  stay  the 
murderous  hand  and  unite  the  lovers.  No  wonder 
such  a  play  achieved  an  utter  fiasco.  When  characters 
announce  to  the  audience  "  I  am  murder  and  vengeance," 
we  have  passed  from  the  reform  to  the  second  child- 
hood of  the  drama. 

Hugo's  epic  conception  was  grandiose,  but  it  was  irre- 
concilable with  the  limitations  of  the  dramatic  genre. 
To  these  fundamental  limitations  Hugo  refused  to  con- 
f  ornio  He  was  no  longer  content  to  mingle  the  tragic  and 
the  comic  ;  he  injected  into  the  drama  history,  philoso- 
phy, the  epic,  and  the  lyric ;  and  to  make  his  dramatic 
action  carry  such  foreign  elements,  he  was  forced  to 
stimulate  it  by  sensational  tricks  in  constantly  increas- 
ing measure,  until  Pegasus  sank  under  the  burden  and 
the  dosing.  But  if  the  drama  could  not  carry  such 
burdens,  he  had  no  further  use  for  it.  He  would  not 
seek  an  audience  that  had  abandoned  him  for  the  timid 
classical  revival  of  Pon sard's  School  of  Good  Sense. 
Indeed,  it  was  not  in  the  drama  alone  that  Eomanticism 
as  a  dogmatic  theory  of  literature  was  bankrupt.  As 
Nanteuil  told  Hugo,  "  There  were  no  more  young  men," 
in  1843,  such  as  had  made  the  success  of  "Hernani" 
in  1830  ;  and  so  the  poet  was  led  for  a  time  from  litera- 
ture to  politics,  from  which  ten  years  later  he  returned 
to  letters,  another  and  a  far  stronger  man.  But  before 
we  follow  him  there,  somewhat  must  be  said  of  his 
work  in  lyric  poetry  and  prose  fiction  during  this  his 
essentially  dramatic  period. 


220  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

The  year  that  followed  "  Bernard  "  was  made  illus- 
trious by  "  Notre-Dame  "  and  by  "  Les  Feuilles  d'au- 
tomne."  The  lyrics  of  the  latter  volume  equalled  any 
that  Hugo  had  yet  written,  and  were  not  soon  sur- 
passed. "  Notre-Dame "  is  an  historical  novel,  less 
erudite  perhaps  than  "  Cinq-Mars,"  but  more  poet- 
ically vivid,  having  indeed  a  "  Gothic  intensity  of 
pathos,"  though  the  reader  will  hardly  find  in  it  that 
"  Grecian  perfection  of  structure "  which  Swinburne 
admired.  The  student  may  pick  many  a  flaw  in  his 
picture  of  Paris  hi  the  days  of  Louis  XI.,  and  still 
more  in  his  description  of  mediseval  society;  but  he 
will  not  with  all  his  documents,  even  if  he  be  a 
Michelet,  produce  facts  that  will  efface  in  our  minds 
the  outlines  of  Hugo's  fancy,  or  make  the  Paris  of 
1482  other  to  us  than  the  Paris  of  Esmeralda. 

The  plot  is  of  the  slightest.  Esmeralda,  the  fair 
gypsy,  is  loved  by  a  priest  fiercely,  by  a  soldier  gayly, 
by  a  hunchback  monster  passionately,  and  is  finally 
executed  as  a  sorceress  through  the  unwitting  inter- 
vention of  her  own  mother,  —  Hugo's  favorite  situation. 
But  far  more  living  than  any  of  these  people  is  the 
cathedral  itself,  ever  present  as  a  symbol  of  the  society 
over  which  it  broods.1  Very  vivid  also  are  the  pictur- 
esque crowds  and  the  vagabond  life  of  the  Cour  des 
Miracles,  with  its  nimble  cripples  and  clairvoyant  blind, 
its  polyglot  language,  strange  customs,  and  weird  super- 
stitions, that  give  us  the  illusion  of  Naturalism  itself. 

While  therefore  as  a  novel  "  Notre-Dame  "  is  of  the 
slightest,  it  is  a  marvel  of  reproductive  imagination. 
By  far  the  best  parts  are  those  in  which  the  author 
abandons  wholly  and  frankly  the  thread  of  his  narra- 

1  This  symbolical  use  of  inanimate  objects  is  frequently  employed 
with  great  effect  by  Zola  and  Ibsen,  and  latterly  by  Daudet. 


THE   YOUNG  HUGO.  221 

tive  to  tell  of  ancient  Paris,  of  the  cathedral,  of  the 
wily  and  perverse  Louis  XL,  of  the  ancient  law  courts, 
or  of  the  relations  of  mediaeval  architecture  to  the 
invention  of  printing.1  He  declared  that  to  inspire 
the  people  with  a  love  of  their  national  monuments 
was  "  one  of  the  chief  ends  of  his  book  and  indeed 
of  his  life."  And  his  wish  was  in  so  far  fulfilled  that 
a  more  intelligent  care  for  historic  buildings  and  mon- 
uments dates  from  the  Eomantic  movement;  and  to 
this  nothing  contributed  more  than  "  Notre-Dame," 
where  the  studies  of  an  enthusiastic  lover  of  the  past 
were  vivified  by  a  style  that  if  it  had  been  learned 
from  Chateaubriand  was  none  the  less  Hugo's  pe- 
culiar possession.  This  was  the  only  important 
prose  work  of  the  early  period,  however ;  for  "  Claude 
Gueux,"  which  followed  in  1835,  was  but  an  eddy 
in  his  literary  productivity.  It  repeated  the  Quixotic 
protest  against  capital  punishment  begun  by  the  "  Der- 
nier jour  d'un  condamne'"  (1828),  a  bit  of  intense  im- 
agination much  praised  in  its  day,  and  repeated  at 
intervals  in  and  out  of  season  through  his  whole  life. 

The  "  Feuilles  d'autonme,"  as  is  natural  in  a  devel- 
oping poetic  genius,  showed  more  care  to  avoid  the 
faults  and  excesses  of  earlier  work  than  to  strike  out 
into  untried  paths.  But  the  public  had  advanced 
toward  his  aesthetic  position ;  and  so  the  new  volume 
found  a  wider  and  readier  acceptance  than  any  that 
had  gone  before,  though,  when  it  is  regarded  from  the 
summit  of  his  poetic  achievement,  it  seems  to  mark 
progress  only  in  a  fuller  mastery  of  metre.  Neither 
the  lights  nor  the  shadows  are  as  strong  here  as 
formerly ;  and  it  is  precisely  in  this  chiaroscuro  that 
Hugo  excels,  as  he  showed  in  the  "  Orientales."  The 

1  Books  iii.  1,2;  v.  2 ;  vi.  1 ;  x.  5. 


222  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

more  domestic  subjects  of  the  "  Autumn  Leaves,"  the 
sentiments  and  aspirations  of  the  fireside,  are  much  less 
favorable  to  his  genius.  But  if  the  collection  is  dis- 
appointing in  itself,  it  bears  several  marks  of  promise 
in  the  broadening  of  the  poet's  mind.  Here,  first,  in 
"  Dedain  "  he  adds  to  his  lyre  "  the  brazen  cord  "  that 
was  to  ring  so  nobly  in  the  poetry  of  his  exile.  Here, 
too,  can  be  traced,  in  "  La  Priere  pour  tons,"  the  instinct 
of  universal  sympathy  that  circles  the  miseries  of  the 
world,  foreshadowing  "  Les  Mise'rables  "  and  the  later 
romances.  This  sympathy  seems  sometimes  to  extend 
beyond  mankind  into  a  pantheistic  aspiration  to  "  min- 
gle his  whole  soul  with  creation,"  as  though  the  poet 
would  make  his  inner  world  of  throbbing  images  and 
feelings  fruitful  by  contact  with  all  external  nature. 

Four  years  occupied  with  dramatic  and  critical  work 
separate  the  "Autumn  Leaves"  from  the  "Twilight 
Songs,"  the  most  varied  of  all  Hugo's  lyric  volumes. 
Here  light,  social,  occasional  pieces  obscure  poems  of 
the  highest  order  on  which  the  reader  comes  quite 
unawares  and  unprepared,  so  that  repeated  reading  and 
close  observation  alone  will  prevent  some  grain  escap- 
ing with  the  chaff.  Many  of  these  verses  are  surely 
anterior  to  the  "  Orien  tales,"  and  some  seem  to  belong 
to  his  "  follies  before  he  was  born."  Several  bear  an 
elegiac  imprint,  and  show  a  tendency  to  mystic  adora- 
tion that  he  certainly  did  not  feel  in  1835,  for  at  no 
time  before  his  exile  had  he  been  so  aggressively  bitter 
and  morosely  pessimistic  as  then,1  and  bitterness  and 
pessimism  are  the  dominant  notes  of  what  is  new  in 
the  "Chants  du  cre'puscule."  They  are  the  source 
of  those  regrets  of  vanished  youth,  of  the  time  when 
his  "thoughts,  like  a  swarm  of  bees,  flew  upward 

1  Cp.  Dupuy :  V.  Hugo,  p.  87  (Classiques  populaires). 


THE   YOUNG  HUGO.  223 

toward  the  sun  .  .  .  when  pride,  joy,  ecstasy,  like  pure 
wine  from  a  rich  vase,  overflowed  from  my  seventeen 
years."  Then  his  mind  was  free,  he  says ;  but  now  he 
is  "  torn  with  rage "  at  critics  who  "  outrage  him  in 
all  his  work,"  and  at  the  censorship,  "  that  bitch  with 
low  forehead  that  skulks  behind  all  power,  vile,  crunch- 
ing ever  in  her  filthy  jaws  some  fragment  of  thy 
starry  robe,  0  Muse ! " 1  Already  the  follies  of  the 
Orleanists  are  beginning  to  rouse  in  him  the  revolu- 
tionary liberal,  with  enough  of  the  poet  mingled  with 
the  democrat  to  make  him  prefer  to  the  piping  peace 
of  Louis  Philippe  the  glorious  labors  of  Napoleon, 
whom  distance  is  already  beginning  to  crown  with  a 
luminous  halo  of  legend.  This  mental  state  explains 
why  Hugo's  satire  has  now  become  more  frequent  and 
threatening ;  and  the  conviction  that  the  civilization 
of  the  small  minority  is  bought  with  the  suffering  of 
the  mass  ftf  mankind  lias  given  to  his  universal  sym- 
pathy a  socialistic  coloring. 

Yet  for  several  years  these  germs  remained  quies- 
cent. The  "  Inner  Voices,"  his  next  volume  of  verse, 
has  little  that  is  satiric,  socialistic,  or  political.  It 
marks  rather  a  deepening  of  that  communion  with 

1  Et  com  me  tin  vif  essaim  d'abeilles, 
Mes  pensees  volaient  au  soleil  .  .  . 
Oil  1'orgeuil,  la  joie  et  1'extase, 
Comme  uii  vin  pur,  (Tun  riche  vase, 
Debordaient  de  mes  dix-sept  ans  .  .  . 
Moi  qui  dechire  tant  de  rage  .  .  . 
Quelque  bouche  fletrie 
Dans  tons  mes  ouvrages  m'outragea. 

(A  Mile  X,  lines  41-42,  17-19,  7,  109-11.) 
Cette  chienne  au  front  bas  qui  suit  tous  les  pouvoirs, 
Vile,  et  machant  toujours  dans  sa  gueule  souille'e, 
O  muse !  quelque  pan  de  ta  robe  etoile'e. 

(A  Alphonse  Rabbe,  at  the  close.) 


224  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

Nature  that  could  be  traced  in  the  "  Autumn  Leaves." 
Here  is  his  first  song  of  the  sea,  which  no  French  poet 
has  loved  and  rendered  as  he  has  done.  Here,  too,  is 
that  striking  picture  of  Nature  as  a  nursing  mother, 
symbolized  in  "  La  Vache."  Even  where  we  might 
listen  for  the  "  brazen  cord,"  as  in  "  Sunt  Lachrymse 
Rerum  "  or  "  A  1'Arc  de  Triomphe  "  we  catch  rather  an 
elegiac  than  a  Pindaric  strain.  And  yet  one  must  go 
back  to  the  "  Orientales  "  to  find  such  vigor  and  grace 
of  language,  such  pregnant  and  picturesque  lines  as 
are  set  like  jewels  in  some  of  these  descriptive  lyrics. 

One  more  volume,  "  Sunbeams  and  Shadows,"  com- 
pletes the  poetic  output  of  the  first  period.  Though 
published  after  the  German  journey,  it  bears  little 
trace  of  a  changed  temper  or  broadened  mind.  Here, 
even  more  than  in  the  "  Inner  Voices,"  one  finds  self- 
restraint,  delicacy  of  touch,  less  of  the  thunder,  more 
of  the  murmuring  brook  and  whispering  breeze.1  The 
satire,  too,  is  dominated  by  the  generous  warmth  of 
universal  sympathy,  a  little  shallow  in  its  breadth, 
that  was  to  give  the  key-note  to  his  political  activity 
in  the  next  decade.  It  was  by  this  that  his  genius 
was  diverted  from  the  stage  and  the  lyre  to  the 
tribune  and  to  political  agitation.  The  ten  years  from 
1843  to  1853  are  marked  by  no  literary  work  of  im- 
port. But  when  destiny,  kind  in  its  apparent  harsh- 
ness, sent  Hugo  into  exile  and  so  gave  him  back  to 
literature,  it  was  seen  how  essentially  this  experience 
had  enriched  and  deepened  his  nature.  Indeed,  when 
he  turned  to  politics,  the  best  that  was  in  him  to  give 
was  not  only  ungiven  but  unsuspected  and  unrealized. 

1  The  most  striking  pieces  of  this  type  are  "  Tristesse  d'Olympio," 
"  La  Statue,"  the  verses  on  Palestrina,  and  the  account  of  his  hoyhood 
at  the  Feuillantines  (Les  Rayons  et  les  ombres,  nos.  34,  36,  35,  19). 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  225 


CHAPTEK  VII. 

HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH. 

THE  decade  that  separates  "  Les  Burgraves  "  from  "  Les 
Chatiments"  marks  a  vital  change  in  the  mind  of 
Victor  Hugo  and  in  the  character  of  his  work.  Even 
the  most  superficial  examination  of  the  kind  and 
amount  of  his  production  makes  this  obvious.  In  the 
first  fifty  years  of  his  life  drama  takes  the  first  place, 
there  is  more  poetry  than  fiction,  and  nearly  a  quarter 
of  the  whole  bulk  is  made  up  of  miscellaneous  travels, 
memoirs,  and  essays.  In  the  second  period  fiction 
advances  to  the  first  place ;  poetry  is  immediately  be- 
hind, and  is  closely  followed  by  political  satires  and 
pamphlets,  which  are  hardly  literature  in  the  highest 
sense,  though  they  often  contain  pages  of  the  greatest 
eloquence.  Essays  and  the  drama  count  but  one 
volume  each.  The  lyric  was  now  recognized  as  the 
best  field  for  the  display  of  his  powers,  and  even  in 
the  prose  fiction  it  takes  a  much  larger  place  than  in 
"  Notre-Dame  "  or  "  Bug-Jargal." l 

In  all  departments  the  work  of  the  second  period 
shows  a  new  strength  and  earnestness.  The  causes 
of  this  added  depth  and  force  are  to  be  sought  in  his 

1  The  "  edition  definitive,"  from  which  all  citations  are  here  made, 
counts  seventy  volumes,  including  the  autobiographical  "V.  Hugo 
raconte."  Of  these  twenty-six  are  prior,  thirty-four  posterior,  to  1852. 
Poetry  counts,  respectively,  six  and  fourteen  volumes;  fiction,  five  and 
fifteen ;  drama,  nine  and  one ;  political  prose,  two  and  ten ;  miscella- 
neous prose,  four  and  four. 

15 


226  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

domestic  and  political  experiences.  The  death  of  his 
daughter  Ldopoldine,  drowned  with  her  young  husband 
at  Villequier  in  1843,  was  the  first  great  sorrow  of  his 
life,  and  left  an  impression  as  enduring  and  as  fruit- 
ful as  the  loss  of  Hallam  on  Tennyson.  It  was  per- 
haps to  escape  from  these  sorrowful  meditations  that 
he  sought  distraction  in  the  struggles  of  the  political 
arena,  to  which  his  untrained  but  generous  mind  was 
attracted  by  the  socialism  of  Proudhon  and  Fourier, 
who  had  roused  in  the  substratum  of  French  thought 
a  vague  but  intense  enthusiasm  that  was  presently  to 
find  expression  in  the  Kevolution  of  1848.  From  1835 
one  can  trace  an  increasing  democratic  tendency  in 
Hugo's  writing.  His  interest  in  politics  grows  yearly 
more  active ;  and  when  he  is  received  into  the  Academy 
in  1841,  his  inaugural  address  is  political  rather  than 
literary.  That  Louis  Philippe  made  him  a  peer  in 
1845  did  not  change  his  sympathies,  and  the  Kevolu- 
tionists  promptly  elected  him  a  member  of  their  Con- 
stituent Assembly  in  1848. 

One  cannot  view  Hugo's  career  as  a  practical  politi- 
cian with  much  satisfaction,  though  the  Eevolution 
was  not  so  fatal  to  him  as  to  Lamartine.  At  first, 
power  or  the  presage  of  danger  that  lay  in  the  incon- 
gruous composition  of  the  Assembly  itself  caused  in 
him  a  conservative  reaction.  He  favored  Louis  Napo- 
leon, and  opposed  all  the  economic  schemes  of  the  radi- 
cals, though  he  refused  to  sanction  political  prosecutions 
and  pleaded  eloquently  for  the  abolition  of  the  death 
penalty.  Yet  in  the  next  year  the  caressing  flattery 
of  Girardin  dexterously  converted  him  into  a  radical 
orator  and  journalist,  most  vehement  to  adore  what 
he  had  burned  and  burn  what  he  had  adored.  P>ut 
his  bitter  and  eloquent  attacks  on  Napoleon  and  Mon- 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  227 

talembert  could  be  tellingly  answered  by  quotations 
from  his  own  speeches ;  and  this  made  him  distrusted 
by  his  new  allies,  while  he  seemed  grieved  at  their 
suspicion,  and  quite  unconscious  of  the  deviousness  of 
his  course. : 

Thus  the  coup  d'etat  of  1851  was  a  moral  good 
fortune  for  Hugo.  It  saved  him  from  himself,  and 
made  of  one  who  seemed  a  political  turn-coat  and  vis- 
ionary a  martyr  and  a  hero  whose  voice  penetrated 
from  his  island  exile  into  every  corner  of  France.  His 
"  Histoire  d'un  crime  "  is  an  eloquent  account  of  those 
stirring  days,  but  it  shows  how  his  efforts  to  organize 
resistance  to  the  usurped  authority  of  the  false  Bona- 
parte were  distrusted  by  his  fellow  Eepublicans.  He 
fled  to  Brussels,  whence  the  Belgian  government  soon 
invited  him  to  move  to  the  more  hospitable  protection 
of  England.  He  took  up  his  residence  as  near  France 
as  possible,  in  the  Channel  Islands,  —  first  in  Jersey, 
then,  at  the  suggestion  of  the  English  government,  in 
Guernsey,  till  the  collapse  of  the  Second  Empire  at 
Sedan  brought  him  back  to  his  country  to  share  the 
darkest  days  of  the  young  Republic's  "  Terrible  Year." 
He  had  consistently  scorned  every  offer  of  amnesty 
from  the  successful  adventurer  whose  perjury  he  had 
branded,  and  he  remained  to  the  last  true  to  the  ring- 
ing words  of  his  early  exile  :  "  Though  but  one  remain 
unreconciled,  that  one  shall  be  I."  2 

These  years  of  exile  steeled  his  mind  to  greater 
hardness.  The  temper  of  his  arms  was  first  revealed 
by  the  presence  of  a  powerful  and  despised  enemy. 
His  patriotism  found  new  fire  in  his  country's  shame. 
Already  in  1 852  he  had  given  a  foretaste  of  his  mor- 

1  See  Eire',  V.  Hugo  apres  1830,  ii.  116-204. 

2  Et  s'il  n'en  reste  qu'un,  je  serai  celui-la.    (Les  Chatiments,  p.  349.) 


228  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

dant  wrath  both  in  justifying  a  joint  appeal  to  insur- 
rection that  had  been  issued  by  the  radical  leaders, 
and  in  the  pamphlet  "  Napoldon  le  petit,"  whose  scur- 
rilousness  is  excused  both  by  its  vigor  and  its  subject. 
But  these  paled  before  "  Les  Chatiments,"  in  which  the 
lyric  unites  with  the  satiric  to  produce  a  classic  that 
will  long  survive  the  Empire  that  evoked  it. 

This  book,  like  "Napole'on  le  petit,"  enjoyed  the 
advertisement  of  police  prohibition  during  the  whole 
imperial  period,  and  no  doubt  contributed  materially 
to  nurse  the  spirit  that  brought  the  Second  Empire 
to  the  disaster  that  justified  the  poet's  severity.  But 
exile  gave  him  calmer  hours  also,  and  to  these  we  owe 
the  "  Contemplations,"  a  collection  of  lyrics  similar  to 
"Les  Rayons  et  les  ombres,"  but  closing  in  a  nobler 
strain ;  while  a  little  later,  in  1857,  Hugo  is  able  to 
show,  in  his  first  "  Legend  of  the  Centuries,"  the  high- 
water  mark  of  his  achievement  in  the  lyrical  epic. 
Then,  in  1862,  the  long-expected  romance  "  Les  Mise'- 
rables"  justified  the  intent  expectation  of  ten  nations, — 
for  nine  translations  appeared  on  the  same  day  as  the 
original,  an  event  unparalleled  till  then  in  the  annals 
of  fiction.  This  interest  was  judiciously  whetted  in 
1863  by  the  unavowed  autobiography,  and  in  1864  he 
essayed  once  more  what  he  called  literary  criticism  in 
"  William  Shakespeare,"  an  introduction  to  a  translation 
of  the  English  poet,  and,  as  was  to  be  anticipated,  much 
more  visionary  and  oracular  than  logical  or  precise. 

Then  follows  the  Indian  summer  of  Hugo's  in  use, 
his  "  Chansons  des  rues  et  des  bois,"  to  be  succeeded 
by  another  social  and  pseudo-philosophic  novel,  "The 
Toilers  of  the  Sea."  He  was  now  so  unquestionably 
the  foremost  of  French  writers  that  the  Empire  could 
not  well  get  along  without  him,  and  visitors  to  the 


HUGO  IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  229 

Paris  Exposition  of  1867  found  the  Guide  to  that 
pageant  provided  with  a  preface  by  the  distinguished 
exile.  So  these  last  years  of  banishment  were  less  a 
grief  than  a  balm  to  his  amour  propre.  His  steadfast 
attitude  won  sympathy  for  his  literary  work.  The 
success  of  "Hernani"  on  its  revival  in  1867  was  cer- 
tainly beyond  its  dramatic  desert,  and  that  of  "  Lucre- 
zia  Borgia  "  in  1870  is  unquestionably  to  be  attributed 
to  personal  esteem,  for  only  a  year  before  the  same 
public  had  received  with  unwonted  coldness  his  fan- 
tastic novel,  "  L'Homme  qui  rit." 

As  the  Empire  tottered  to  its  fall,  Hugo's  interest  in 
politics  became  more  absorbing.  His  two  sons  joined 
with  his  son-in-law  Vacquerie  and  the  since  notorious 
Eochefort  to  publish  "  Le  Eappel,"  a  radical  journal. 
To  this  the  exile  frequently  contributed,  and  so  pre- 
pared for  himself  an  enthusiastic  reception  in  Paris 
whenever  the  inevitable  revolution  should  invite  his 
return.  But  1870  revealed  once  more  and  almost 
immediately  the  hopelessly  unpractical  nature  of  his 
political  ideas,  by  his  appeal  to  the  triumphant  Germans 
to  desert  the  men  who  had  led  them  to  victory,  found 
a  republic,  and  ally  themselves  to  the  French,  whom 
they  had  always  distrusted  and  now  despised.  Nor  was 
Hugo  satisfied  with  this  sky-rocket.  In  February, 
1871,  the  electors  of  Paris  had  chosen  him  by  a  great 
majority  to  be  their  delegate  to  the  National  Assembly ; 
but  here  the  violence  of  his  speeches  against  the  inevit- 
able peace  roused  that  body  to  such  a  pitch  of  impa- 
tience that  in  March  he  shook  its  dust  from  his  feet. 

A  tew  days  later  he  lost  a  son  and  brought  the 
body  to  Paris,  just  as  the  Commune  was  achieving  its 
first  success.  He  remained  here  long  enough  to  pro- 
test against  the  destruction  of  the  Vendome  Column, 


230  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

to  which  it  will  be  remembered  he  had  dedicated  two 
odes.  Then  he  made  his  way  a  second  time  to  Brussels, 
and  was  a  second  time  invited  by  the  government  to 
leave  it,  barely  escaping  the  violence  of  a  Belgian  mob 
for  his  defiance  of  international  law.  He  went  to 
Luxemburg,  and  later  to  Paris,  where  he  failed  signally 
in  the  elections  of  1872,  perhaps  because  his  experience 
of  the  Communists  had  made  him  more  conservative, 
perhaps  because  their  experience  of  him  had  made  the 
electors  of  Paris  more  cautious. 

But  if  he  might  not  be  the  chosen  tribune,  he  was 
already  the  poet-laureate  of  the  Third  Eepublic.  A 
hundred  thousand  copies  of  "  Les  Chatirnents  "  were  sold 
within  a  year,  it  was  publicly  read  in  the  theatres,  and 
several  of  his  plays,  notably  "  Euy  Bias,"  were  revived 
with  much  success.  In  his  new  capacity  he  now  put 
forth  "  L'Anne'e  terrible,"  a  national  and  patriotic 
volume  that  made  a  French  critic  exclaim  with  just 
pride  that  Germany  had  no  such  poet  to  sing  her 
victory  as  France  to  glorify  even  her  disaster.  He 
followed  this  with  a  romance  of  the  first  Revolution, 
" Quatre-vingt-treize,"  which,  like  "Les  Mise'rables," 
appeared  simultaneously  in  ten  languages,  though  it 
did  not  gain  the  success  of  that  work.  But  this  was 
due  more  to  the  evolution  of  public  taste  than  to  any 
falling  off  in  the  powers  of  the  author,  who  now  turned 
to  collecting  his  political  memoirs  and  to  a  persistent 
campaign  of  letters  and  addresses  that  eventually 
secured  his  election  to  the  Senate,  though  only  by  a 
narrow  majority  and  on  a  second  ballot.  In  this 
capacity  the  old  man  of  seventy-four  distinguished 
himself  by  zealously  advocating  a  scheme  for  general 
amnesty,  then  so  impracticable  that  it  secured  but  six 
votes.  But  in  1877  he  was  able  to  do  his  country  a 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  231 

real  service  by  holding  up  before  the  conspirators  of 
the  Sixteenth  of  May  his  "  History  of  a  Crime "  by 
which  France  had  been  betrayed  in  1851. 

Meantime  the  second,  though  inferior,  part  of  the 
"  Legend  of  the  Centuries  "  showed  him  still  the  great- 
est poet  of  France,  and  in  "  L'Art  d'etre  grandpere  "  he' 
touched  the  chords  of  domestic  pathos  almost  as  art- 
lessly as  in  the  "Contemplations."  But  not  content 
with  these  multiplied  titles  to  literary  renown  nor 
heeding  the  warning  of  the  years,  he  published  a  series 
of  so-called  "  Philosophic  Poems," 1  followed  these  with 
the  two  volumes  of  "  Les  Quatre  vents  de  1'esprit "  and 
"  Torquemada,"  while  he  left  unpublished  other  dramas 
and  poems  that  have  sufficed  to  fill  several  volumes. 

He  died  in  1885,  in  the  season  of  roses,  as  he  had 
foretold.2  His  great  age,  reaching  out  into  a  new  gen- 
eration from  an  epoch  that  had  passed  away,  could  not 
but  impress  the  popular  imagination,  the  more  as  his 
talent,  his  presence,  and  his  personal  physique  had  in 
them  something  of  the  monumental  and  grandiose,  so 
that  his  death  stirred  a  wave  of  popular  sympathy  such 
as  perhaps  has  been  the  lot  of  no  writer  since  literature 
began.  His  body  was  exposed  in  state  beneath  the  Arc 
de  Triomphe.  Thronging  thousands  gathered  around 
it,  and  made  his  funeral  a  pageant  that  royalty  might 
envy  and  could  not  parallel.  The  Panthe'on,  that 
French  temple  of  fame,  was  abandoned  by  the  patron 
saint  of  Paris  to  make  room  for  its  popular  hero.3 

1  Le  Pape,  La  Pitie  supreme,  Les  Religions  et  la  religion,  L'Ane 
(1878-1880). 

2  L'Annee  terrible,  Janvier,  i. 

3  Hugo  died  without  the  sacraments  of  the  church.     The  clergy 
therefore  protested  against  his  burial  in  the  vaults  of  a  consecrated 
building,  and,  when  the  protest  was  unheeded,  abandoned  it,  not  for 
the  first  time,  to  secular  uses. 


232  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

This  chronological  review  of  Hugo's  work  may  serve 
as  an  introduction  to  a  study  of  it  in  its  categories, 
from  which  alone  one  can  estimate  the  poet's  place  or 
the  nature  and  limitations  of  his  genius.  Here  we 
may  dismiss  immediately  the  political  speeches  and 
pamphlets,  for  all  their  eloquence  and  bitterness  is 
distilled  and  refined  in  the  wormwood  of  "  Les  Chati- 
ments ; "  nor  'need  allusion  be  made  to  memoirs  and 
letters,  for  these  belong  rather  to  biography  than  to 
literature.  Fiction  and  poetry  remain.  By  his  novels 
Hugo  is  best,  and  often  solely,  known  among  us ;  these, 
then,  may  introduce  us  to  the  works  that  make  him 
one  of  the  greatest  lyric  poets  of  the  world. 

The  generation  that  separated  "  Les  Mise'rables " 
from  "  Notre-Dame "  had,  as  we  have  seen,  radically 
changed  Hugo's  sociology  and  politics.  So  while  "  Notre- 
Dame  "  was  above  all  an  evocation  of  the  past,  "  Les 
Mise'rables  "  reveals  the  author  with  his  eyes  on  the 
present  and  his  heart  in  the  future.  "  So  long,"  he  says 
in  his  preface,  "  as  there  shall  exist  through  the  fault 
of  our  laws  and  customs  a  social  condemnation  that 
creates  artificial  hells  in  the  midst  of  our  civilization 
and  complicates  a  divine  destiny  by  human  fatalism ; 
so  long  as  the  three  problems  of  the  century  —  the  degra- 
dation of  man  by  the  proletariat,  the  fall  of  woman  by 
hunger,  the  arrested  development  of  the  child  by  igno- 
rance —  are  not  solved ;  so  long  as  social  asphyxia  is  pos- 
sible in  any  place,  —  in  other  words  and  from  a  wider 
point  of  view,  so  long  as  there  shall  be  on  earth  igno- 
rance and  misery,  books  like  this  cannot  be  useless." 

It  may  be  doubted,  however,  whether  Hugo  has 
made  an  important  contribution  to  the  banishment  of 
ignorance  and  misery  from  the  world  by  this  series 
of  scenes  loosely  strung  together  by  their  connection 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  233 

with  the  convict,  manufacturer,  and  philanthropist, 
Jean  Valjean,  and  relieved,  like  "  Notre-Dame,"  by 
digressions  and  lay-sermons  that  hamper  the  narrative 
but  best  reward  the  reader.  Into  the  details  of  this 
narrative  it  is  unnecessary  to  our  purpose  to  enter. 
The  strength  of  the  work  lies  not  in  its  romantic  nor 
in  its  psychological  interest,  though  there  is  power 
and  truth  in  his  analysis  of  the  veil  of  ostracism  that 
separates  the  convict  from  his  fellows  and  almost 
forces  him  to  crime ;  and  individual  scenes,  such  as 
Valjean's  escape  from  Thernardier,  the  defence  of  the 
barricade,  and  the  flight  through  the  sewers,  are  exe- 
cuted with  great  vigor,  while  parts  of  the  description 
of  the  battle  of  Waterloo  reveal  the  poetic  imagination 
of  Hugo  in  all  its  glory. 

The  ten  volumes  of  this  vast  romance  lack  continuity 
and  proportion.  If  the  work  is  regarded  as  a  whole, 
Flaubert  may  be  right  in  denying  it  either  truth  or 
grandeur ;  and  in  parts  the  style  is,  as  he  says,  "  inten- 
tionally incorrect  and  vulgar."  As  in  the  dramas,  the 
contrasts  are  sharp  in  subject,  scene,  and  style,  and  the 
story  is  but  a  thread  on  which  Hugo  strings  his  many- 
colored  beads.  Antiquarian  lore,  political  reminis- 
cences, social  vaticinations,  realistic  "slumming,"  with 
dialectic  studies  that  show  much  curious  observation, 
interrupt  the  narrative,  which  is  itself  half  philosophic 
and  half  idyllic.  The  whole  is  a  chaos  of  glowing 
eloquence,  deep  emotion,  weary  stretches  of  common- 
place, and  a  few  treacherous  quicksands  of  bathos  that 
reveal  a  cyclopean  lack  of  humor.  He  takes  for  his 
philosophic  background  voluntary  expiation  and  re- 
pentance that  produce  a  moral  regeneration  by  the 
revelation  of  a  higher  life.  Such  a  background  ad- 
mirably sets  off  humanitarian  pleas,  and  democratic  if 


234  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

not  socialistic  sentiments;  for  it  is  sentiment  rather 
than  reason  with  Hugo  that  makes  the  poor  and  op- 
pressed seem  right,  and  the  dominant  and  rich  wrong. 
This  emotional  tone  unites  with  directly  autobio- 
graphical portions  and  a  subjective  style  to  give  the 
whole  a  lyric  character.  The  psychology  is  not  based 
on  observation,  nor  correlated  with  the  actual  condi- 
tions of  life.  Valjean  is  a  Utopian  who  shows  neither 
wisdom  nor  prudence.  We  feel  that  his  visionary 
magnanimity  would  be  neither  natural  nor  profitable 
in  life,  and  it  threatens  to  be  wearisome  even  in  ro- 
mance. But  the  minor  characters  show  still  more 
of  that  inevitable  tendency  of  subjective  fiction  to 
the  symbol  and  the  type  that  we  have  noted  already 
in  Hugo's  earlier  drama  and  fiction.  Enjolras  poses 
persistently  as  the  apostle  and  martyr  of  uncom- 
promising democracy,  Javert  is  at  once  more  and  less 
than  human  in  his  reverence  for  constituted  author- 
ity, and  the  grisette  Fantine  is  declared  to  be  the 
symbol  of  joy  and  modesty,  "innocence  floating  on 
error,"  and  "  still  preserving  the  shade  that  separates 
Psyche  from  Venus."  Marius  is  Hugo's  youthful  self, 
a  type  of  young  energy  nursing  democratic  aspirations 
on  imperial  memories.  But  all  of  these  together  have 
not  the  life  of  the  charming  little  gamin  Gavroche,  the 
classical  study  of  the  Paris  street-boy ;  for  into  this 
character  Hugo  put  his  poet's  heart,  and  the  touch  of 
sympathy  that  makes  the  world  kin.  This  and  the 
epic  descriptions  familiar  to  every  lover  of  French  lit- 
erature will  carry  "  Les  Mise'rables "  through  many 
generations  of  readers  and  revolutions  of  popular  taste, 
although  even  in  the  year  of  its  appearance  Hugo's 
novel  was  of  a  type  of  fiction  already  discredited. 
Here,  as  throughout  his  second  period,  he  barred  the 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  235 

current  of  a  literary  evolution  that  he  did  not  avert  or 
deflect.1 

The  epic  and  lyric  elements  in  Hugo's  fiction  are 
even  more  strongly  marked  in  "  The  Toilers  of  the  Sea," 
inspired  by  the  poet's  life  at  Guernsey  and  his  intimate 
daily  contact  with  "  the  men  who  go  down  to  the  sea 
in  ships  and  know  the  mystery  of  the  great  waters." 
An  oracular  preface  tells  us  that  Eeligion,  Society,  and 
Nature  are  the  three  struggles  of  mankind  and  also 
its  three  needs.  "  A  triple  necessity  weighs  on  us, 
of  dogmas,  laws,  and  things."  Former  romances  had 
dealt  with  the  first  and  second ;  this  should  show 
how  the  fatality  of  things  "  is  mingled  with  the  su- 
preme fatality,  the  human  heart."  But  these  high- 
sounding  phrases  must  not  be  taken  too  literally; 
for  indeed  the  cause  of  all  the  tragic  catastrophe  is 
the  heroine's  lack  of  common  honesty  and  the  hero's 
lack  of  common-sense.  Gilliat's  emotions  are  as  deep 
as  the  ocean.  Deruchette  is  as  treacherous  and  co- 
quettish as  the  sea.  But,  once  more,  what  we  enjoy 
is  not  the  psychology  of  character  nor  the  story,  but 
the  long  description  of  the  perilous  and  solitary  quest 
of  Gilliat  on  the  Douvres,  where  throughout  prose 
has  suffered  a  sea-change,  and  throbs  and  thrills  with 
the  far-resounding  waves.  Yet,  as  a  whole,  "  The  Toil- 
ers of  the  Sea  "  is  inferior  both  in  power  and  in  inter- 
est to  "  Les  Mise"  rabies  "  and  to  "  Notre-Dame."  The 
imagination  may  be  more  grandiose,  but  the  subject  is 
more  petty.  Hugo  needs  either  a  wider  canvas  or  an 
historical  perspective.  The  latter  he  provided  for  his 
next  novel,  "  L'Homme  qui  rit ; "  but  he  saw  fit,  with 
strange  perversity,  to  import  into  the  English  court  of 
Elizabeth  the  extravagances  of  "  Han  d'lslande,"  and 
1  The  metaphor  is  Brunetiere's. 


236  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

even  the  unparalleled  efforts  of  his  publishers  could 
not  avert  its  rejection  by  a  public  now  in  the  full- 
blooded  confidence  of  the  Naturalistic  spring. 

The  busy  times  of  republican  reconstruction  were 
hardly  passed,  however,  before  Hugo,  piqued  by  this 
check,  returned  to  historical  fiction.  Taught  by  ex- 
perience or  guided  by  instinct,  he  now  chose  the  period 
suited  of  all  others  to  his  genius  and  environment, 
and  gave  to  the  world  in  "  Ninety-three  "  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  historical  evocations  of  French  litera- 
ture. The  time  is  the  crucial  year  of  the  First  Ee- 
public;  the  scene,  the  civil  war  in  Vende'e,  to  which 
Hugo  was  attracted  both  by  his  nature  and  nurture, 
for  his  parents  united  the  blood  of  the  contending 
factions.  In  this  novel  one  notes  indeed  the  growing 
mannerisms  of  old  age,  with  the  unevenness  of  style 
and  looseness  of  construction  common  to  all  of  Hugo's 
novels,  but  one  finds  also  more  intensity  of  action, 
more  real  palpitating  life,  and  a  truer  tragic  catas- 
trophe than  in  any  of  his  earlier  romances.  The  Ven- 
ddan  hero  Lantenac  is  not  too  heroic  for  a  Breton 
noble,  nor  is  his  nephew  Gauvin  too  sentimental  for 
a  Eepublican  of  the  "  Feast  of  Pikes/'  The  unique 
epoch  justified  and  demanded  a  more  than  human 
heroism  and  magnanimity.  In  Cimourdain,  to  be 
sure,  one  recognizes  with  no  special  pleasure  the 
Javert  of  "  Les  Mise'rables,"  the  uncompromising  pur- 
suer of  an  ideal,  —  in  this  case  the  incarnate  Eepublic, 
—  who,  like  his  prototype,  ends  his  life  by  suicide, 
as  if  to  teach  that  a  life  of  law  without  sentiment 
seems  to  the  Eomantic  mind  impossible  and  self- 
destructive. 

But,  as  before,  in  "Ninety-three,"  what  leaves  the 
freshest  impress  on  the  mind  are  the  minor  characters 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  237 

and  incidents,  —  the  peasant  woman  with  her  three 
children  that  run  like  a  golden  thread  through  these 
scenes  of  fire  and  blood ;  the  delightful  old  trooper, 
Kadoub ;  pictures  of  political  Paris  suggesting  the 
magic-lantern  slides  of  Carlyle.  The  weird  procession 
of  the  guillotine,  the  cannon  aboard  ship  broken  loose 
and  spreading  terror  and  destruction,  the  sieges  of 
Dol  and  of  La  Torgue,  take  here  the  place  of  the 
fight  with  the  devil-fish  in  the  "Toilers,"  and  of 
Waterloo  and  the  Barricade  in  "  Les  Mis^rables ; " 
and  the  climax,  in  spite  of  some  rather  rank  flowers 
of  rhetoric,  is  unusually  effective  and  affecting.  In- 
deed, "  Ninety-three  "  is  Hugo's  best  novel,  though  its 
place  in  literature  is  less  unique  and  probably  lower 
than  that  of  "  Notre-Dame  "  or  of  the  redemption  of 
Jean  Valjean. 

But  it  is  time  to  leave  these  lower  walks  and  ascend 
to  the  heights  of  Hugo's  genius.  For  in  his  poetry  this 
second  period  is  much  more  than  a  convenient  divi- 
sion; it  marks  a  distinctly  new  manner.  Komantic 
it  is  still,  but  now  rather  in  the  nobler  form  of  an 
idealist's  protest  against  the  cloud  of  skepticism  in 
the  mind  and  weariness  in  the  will  that  characterized 
the  Second  Empire.  So  "  Les  Chatiments  "  of  1853  are 
as  different  from  "  Les  Eayons  et  les  ombres  "  of  1840 
as  tempered  steel  is  from  polished  iron.  His  politi- 
cal experience,  followed  by  the  enforced  calm  and  the 
bitter  indignation  of  exile,  gave  his  verses  from  this 
time  an  intensity  of  conviction  that  seems  sometimes 
to  echo  the  earnestness  of  a  Hebrew  prophet.  While 
Gautier  sought  excuse  and  forgetfulness  in  his  doc- 
trine of  art  for  art,  and  taught  that  impersonality 
was  essential  to  the  highest  reaches  of  poetry,  these 
"  Scourgings,"  throbbing  and  aglow  with  passion,  anger, 


238  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

hatred,  but  burning  too  with  a  lofty  and  trustful 
patriotism,  raised  the  protest  of  their  ringing  halt  to 
the  surrender  of  the  noblest  prerogative  of  literature. 
But  it  was  only  in  exile  that  such  lyrics  were  possi- 
ble, only  in  exile  that  French  thought  was  free.  "  Les 
Chatiments,"  printed  in  Belgium  and  smuggled  across 
the  frontier  in  countless  incorrect  and  garbled  editions, 
concealed  sometimes,  it  is  said,  in  plaster  casts  of 
the  emperor  they  scourged,  aroused  a  fearful  joy  in 
countless  readers.  But  among  the  poets  of  France 
the  currents  of  development,  though  divergent,  were 
away  from  Hugo.  Here,  too,  he  barred  but  did  not 
deflect  the  course  of  lyric  evolution. 

Nearly  all  the  satires  of  "  Les  Chatiments "  were 
written  between  December,  1851,  and  the  end  of  the 
next  year ;  a  few  are  anterior  to  that  date,  a  very  few 
are  a  little  later.  Evidently  he  "sang  because  he 
must;"  his  wrath  was  absolutely  sincere.  And  yet 
critics  have  not  failed  to  observe  that  he  had  rather 
less  reason  than  others  had  to  feel  it.  He  had  con- 
tributed as  much  as  any  man  save  Beranger  to  the  re- 
vival of  the  Napoleonic  legend ;  and  when  De  Vigny 
and  Lamartine  had  tried  to  stem  the  tide  whose 
consequences  they  foresaw,  his  second  ode  to  the 
Vendome  Column  had  sought  to  cover  them  with 
contempt.  He  had  actually  printed  a  special  cheap 
and  popular  edition  of  his  Bonapartist  odes,  in  which 
he  talks  about  regilding  the  altar  of  Napoleon's  mem- 
ory, by  whose  death  France  is  left  a  widow.  Nor  had 
he  been  wholly  unwilling  to  co-operate  with  Louis 
himself,  until  he  found  Louis  unwilling  to  co-operate 
with  him  by  rewarding  his  efforts  with  a  cabinet  posi- 
tion.1 But  Hugo  had  a  happy  faculty  of  forgetting 

i  Cp.  Eire,  op.  cit.  ii.  192. 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  239 

his  inconsistencies ;  and  whatever  part  disappointed 
ambition  may  have  had  in  his  change  of  political 
position,  he  was  unflinching  in  his  new  convictions, 
and  so  sincere  in  his  belief  in  himself  that  he  hardly 
realized  that  he  was  exposing  his  own  conduct  to  in- 
vidious criticism  by  his  reckless  denunciation  of  the 
supporters  of  the  Empire. 

One  other  small  reserve  must  be  made  before  we 
can  frankly  praise  "  Les  Chatiments."  In  his  violent 
emotion  Hugo  sometimes  falls  into  strange  errors  of 
taste,  and  mistakes  incoherent  excitement  for  eloquent 
emphasis.  Then,  too,  the  uninformed  reader  will  sus- 
pect what  the  well-informed  reader  knows,  that  his 
denunciation  is  sometimes  unjust  or  merely  vitupera- 
tive; and  this,  even  more  than  exaggeration,  is  fatal 
to  satiric  effect.  Several  pieces  and  many  lines  of 
this  sort  mar  Hugo's  "  Scourgings," l  the  more  because 
of  their  general  high  range  of  excellence ;  for,  as 
Swinburne  has  said,2  these  ninety-eight  poems  between 
the  prologue  "  Nox  "  and  the  epilogue  "  Lux  "  roll  and 
break  and  lighten  and  thunder  like  the  waves  of  a 
visible  sea,  and  execute  their  chorus  of  rising  and 
descending  harmonies  with  almost  as  much  depth, 
variety,  and  musical  force,  with  as  much  power,  life, 
and  passionate  unity,  as  the  breakers  on  the  shores 
where  they  were  written. 

1  See,  for  instance  "  Un  Autre  "  (p.  169),  where  Hugo  calls  the 
talented  journalist  Veuillot  "  a  hypocritic  Zo'ilus  "  whose  mother  was 
a  Javotte  and  whose  father  was  the  devil.     He  even  has  the  astonish- 
ingly bad  taste  to  mock  him  for  the  poverty  of  his  student  years.     It 
is  natural  to  compare  these  verses,  as  Brunetiere  has  done  (Poesic 
lyrique,  ii.  81),  with  Voltaire's  on  Freron  in  "Le  Pauvre  diable " 
and  "  La  Capitolade."    On  the  causes  and  justice  of  Hugo's  wrath, 
see  Eire',  especially  op.  cit.  ii.  192,  and  "V.  Hugo  apres  1852,"  pp. 
42-55. 

2  Op.  cit.,  p.  56. 


240  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

The  clauses  of  the  proclamation  in  which  Napoleon 
announced  the  success  of  his  coup  d'etat  furnish  the 
external  division  of  the  satires;  and  the  pieces  are 
ordered  with  great  skill,  so  that  they  will  bear  con- 
nected reading  without  monotony.  The  most  pathetic 
and  elegiac  poems  alternate  with  the  noblest  verses 
that  wrath  could  inspire.  What  can  be  more  touching 
than  the  grandmother's  lament  over  the  body  of  the 
little  child  killed  by  the  volleys  of  that  fatal  Fourth 
of  December  (p.  81)?  What  more  exquisite  than  the 
simple  story  of  the  exile  and  death  of  Pauline  Eoland 
(p.  27),.or  the  songs  of  the  banished  and  of  those  they 
left  behind  them  (pp.  64,  209)  ?  What  more  beautiful 
than  the  calm  repose  of  his  "Dawn  "  at  Jersey  (p.  175), 
or  what  more  strong  in  its  epic  simplicity  than  the 
opening  lines  of  "  Expiation "  (p.  223),  surely  the 
finest  piece  in  this  rich  treasury,  with  its  terrible  pic- 
ture of  the  retreat  from  Moscow,  through  which  runs 
like  a  shiver  the  refrain :  "  It  snowed,  It  snowed "  ? 
What  more  intense  than  the  lines  on  Waterloo  that 
follow,  and  what  more  galling  than  their  bitter  con- 
clusion that  the  only  adequate  expiation  for  Napo- 
leon I.  is  the  contemplation  of  Napoleon  III.  ?  What 
more  stinging  verses  were  ever  penned  than  that  other 
contrast  between  the  great  and  the  little  Napoleon 
(p.  311),  where  each  strophe  hisses  with  added  con- 
tempt its  refrain  "  Petit,  Petit  "  ?  What  more  grew- 
some  than  the  picture  of  the  half -buried  victims  of  the 
street-massacre  (p.  37),  or  than  his  call  to  the  people 
to  rise,  like  Lazarus  from  his  tomb  (p.  77) ;  or,  finally, 
what  more  noble  than  his  appeal  to  God  to  strengthen 
his  hand  for  vengeance  (p.  101),  and  to  the  oppressed 
to  be  moderate  in  their  destined  triumph :  "  Let  Cain 
pass  by,  he  belongs  to  God"  (pp.  151,  156)?  How 


HUGO   IN    EXILE   AND   IN   TKIUMPH.  241 

stirring  is  his  patriotic  appeal  to  the  flags  of  the  first 
Empire !  What  calm  consolation,  what  confidence  in 
the  ineffable  love  of  the  all-upholding  arms,  breathes 
in  "  Stella  "  (p.  283)  !  And,  finally,  where  in  Hugo,  or 
in  all  French  verse,  shall  we  find  such  a  rush  and 
sweep  of  contemptuous  scorn  as  in  "  La  Keculade " 
(p.  295)  ? 

These  lyrics  have  frequently  an  epic  element,  and  in 
a  few  pieces  the  satire  takes  a  dramatic  form.1  Here, 
with  the  bold  personification  of  a  mediaeval  miracle- 
play,  the  Cellars  of  Lille,  the  Garrets  of  Kouen,  the 
Prison  Ships,  a  Tomb,  Justice,  Reason,  Honor,  and  the 
Marseillaise  stamp  in  laconic  epigrams  their  condem- 
nation of  Napoleon,  and  Conscience  teaches  Harmodius 
that  "  he  may  kill  that  man  with  tranquillity."  Note- 
worthy, too,  is  the  consolation  that  the  exile  sought 
and  found  in  increasing  measure  in  nature  and  in  the 
sea,  whose  mysterious  fascination  grew  on  him  from 
the  drowning  of  his  daughter,  in  1843,  till  it  reached 
its  climatic  expression  in  "The  Toilers  of  the  Sea." 
Especially  does  one  note  this  temper  in  the  closing 
section  of  "  Les  Chatiments  ;  "  for  in  "  Lux  "  all  vitu- 
peration, denunciation,  and  bitterness  are  laid  aside  in 
a  grand  vision  of  peace  on  earth  and  good-will,  where 
God  shall  take  the  rope  of  the  alarm  bell  and  bind 
with  it  the  thoughts  of  men  in  an  eternal  sheaf,  where 
each  shall  labor  for  all,  and  all  rejoice  in  the  work  of 
each.  Eternal  hope  conquers  all  doubt  with  its  cer- 
tainty and  all  vengeance  in  its  magnanimity. 

This  serener  temper  inspires  also  "  Les  Contempla- 
tions "  with  a  peculiar  charm  that  makes  this  collec- 
tion, or  at  least  its  latter  division,  the  noblest  purely 
lyric  poetry  in  French.  The  earlier  part  contains 

1  Pages  69,  73,  147,  195  of  the  16mo  edition. 
16 


242  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

only  verses  written  prior  to  1843,  which  might  have 
been  mentioned  in  connection  with  "  Les  Kayons  et 
les  ombres"  had  there  been  any  particular  necessity 
of  discussing  them  at  all,  save  in  their  contrast  to 
the  maturer  poems  of  the  later  manner.  The  second 
volume  of  the  "  Contemplations  "  opens  with  "  Paucae 
Meae,"  memorial  verses  to  Ldopoldine,  among  which 
are  the  best  of  Hugo's  elegies.1  But  only  one  poem  of 
this  group  rises  above  the  kind  of  excellence  that  was 
to  be  found  in  the  poems  of  1840  ;  and  this,  "  Les  Deux 
cavaliers,"  2  is  an  exception  that  proves  the  rule,  for  it 
was  written  in  1853.  Here  indeed,  as  Brunetiere 
points  out,  the  poet  begins  to  seek  his  effects  less  in 
clearness  of  design  and  high  relief  of  form  than  in  the 
mingling  play  of  light  and  shade,  in  the  science  of 
chiaroscuro.  "  He  tries  to  thicken  the  shadow,  to 
flash  light  on  it,  and  then  to  let  it  sink  again  into  its 
obscurity."  And  the  manner  here  foreshadowed  is 
characteristic  of  all  the  later  poems,  and  is  among  the 
causes  of  their  lyric  pre-eminence. 

The  central  subjects  of  the  "  Contemplations  "  of  this 
island  exile  are,  not  unnaturally,  death  and  the  sea, 
both  united  in  the  domestic  tragedy  of  Villequier. 
As  might  be  expected,  Hugo's  notions  of  the  future 
life  are  generously  indefinite.  He  is  sure  that  death 
is  an  unfolding  of  a  fuller  being,  but  that  does  not 
"unteach  him  to  complain,"  as  may  be  seen  in  the 
simple  pathos  of  the  lines  addressed  to  his  wife  in 
1855.  In  the  main  this  reaching  out  into  the  un- 
known is  confined  to  "  Paucse  Mese."  In  the  last  part 
the  breath  of  the  sea  is  more  felt  as  daily  contact 
with  its  moods  impresses  it  on  his  thought ;  but 

1  For  instance,  "  Trois  ans  apres,"  "  Veni,  vidi,  vici,"  "  A  Villequier." 
3  Book  iv.  no  12.     Cp.  Brunetiere,  Poe'sie  lyrique,  ii.  88-97. 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TKIUMPH.  243 

while  he  sees  in  it  the  angry  waste,  the  limitless  gulf, 
the  infinite  sepulchre,  yet  this  very  aspect  of  ocean 
seems  to  have  inspired  Hugo,  as  it  did  Wordsworth, 
with  that  fortitude  and  patient  cheer  which  gave  him 
confidence  in  his  genius  and  his  mission,  —  one  might 
be  tempted  to  say,  too  great  confidence,  were  it  not 
that  Hugo's  estimate  of  himself  anticipated  that  of 
posterity.  He  thought  —  and  the  mass  of  Frenchmen 
seem  to  agree  with  him  —  that  the  poet  ought  to  he  a 
shepherd  of  the  people,  a  curate  of  souls,  and  he 
thought,  too,  that  his  ideal  was  fully  realized  in  him- 
self; so  through  these  years  of  exile  he  grew  more 
intent  on  the  substance  of  his  message,  less  meticu- 
lous as  to  its  form.  Thus  his  work,  alike  in  form  and 
substance,  became  more  intensely  individual,  the  veri- 
table "  memoirs  of  his  soul."  And  we  may  imagine 
the  seer's  contempt  for  the  disciples  of  formal  correct- 
ness and  polish.  He  would  rather,  he  said,  be  "  gro- 
tesquely useful "  than  a  literary  mandarin,  and  he 
condensed  his  scorn  of  such  toying  with  the  eternal 
verities  into  the  words :  "  The  vase  that  will  not  go 
to  the  fountain  merits  the  hoots  of  the  jugs." 

In  1857  Hugo  published  two  volumes  of  his 
"  Legend  of  the  Centuries,"  which  were  supplemented 
in  1877  and  completed  in  1883.1  Then  followed  the 
"  Chansons  des  rues  et  des  bois,"  a  true  St.  Martin's 
summer,  a  bursting  of  spring  buds  before  the  frosty 
but  kindly  winter  of  the  poet's  old  age.  There  may 
be  no  genuine  passion  in  these  songs,  any  more  per- 
haps than  in  the  "Zuleika"  of  Goethe's  "  West-Ost- 
liche  Divan  ; "  but  there  is  a  joyous,  naive  naturalism 
that  in  spite  of  occasional  lapses  of  taste  is  not  with- 

1  As  the  poems  of  the  three  publications  are  redistributed  in  the 
complete  edition,  it  is  more  convenient  to  treat  them  together  later. 


244  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

out  a  curious  charm.  The  metrical  movement,  too,  is 
wonderfully  free  and  unrestrained.  The  poet  seems 
to  renew  his  youth,  and  pipes  as  the  linnets  sing,  with 
easy  sylvan  familiarity  and  country  good-humor,  in  idyls 
whose  simplicity  is  marred  but  rarely  by  overloaded 
fancy  or  obtrusive  learning.  Almost  perfect  in  this  kind 
is  the  "  Country  Holiday  near  Paris," 1  with  its  faintly 
suggested  historical  background  and  the  bustling  city 
left  behind.  In  the  "  Contemplations  "  the  poet's  hom- 
age to  Nature  had  been  deep ;  here  it  is  gentle,  elegiac. 
He  watches  the  sower  at  dusk,  and  "  feels  what  must 
be  his  faith  in  the  useful  flight  of  time."  2  More  than 
once  this  sympathy  with  the  natural  instincts  and 
purely  physical  life  of  man  wakens  in  him  an  echo 
of  the  French  Eenaissance,  and  we  seem  to  be  listening 
to  Ronsard. 

Seven  years  separate  these  "  Songs  of  Wayside  and 
Wood "  from  "  L'Annde  terrible,"  but  they  are  sepa- 
rated by  more  than  time  ;  for  just  as  his  exile  had 
stirred  his  genius  to  profounder  depths  between  1852 
and  1859  than  were  sounded  in  the  next  ten  years,  so  the 
terrible  months  of  his  country's  disaster  (from  Sedan, 
in  September,  1870,  to  the  fiery  destruction  of  the 
Commune  in  May,  1871,  and  the  poet's  brief  flight  to 
Belgium),  the  daily  memento  of  defeat  in  the  presence 
of  the  insolent  conquerors,  the  humiliation  of  borrowing 
money  abroad  to  buy  liberty  at  home, —  all  these  things 
roused  in  Hugo  emotions  as  intense  as  those  of  1852, 
and  rekindled  the  wonted  fires  beneath  his  seventy 
years. 

But  if  Hugo  had  been  bitter  in  his  denunciation 
of  the  triumphant  emperor,  he  scorned,  with  a  noble 
though  perhaps  a  somewhat  histrionic  magnanimity,  to 

i  Chansons,  I.  iv.  2.  2  Ib.,  II.  i.  3. 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  245 

insult  him  in  defeat.  No  partisan  alloy  should  mar 
the  true  ring  of  his  patriotism.  His  book  is  a  diary, 
reflecting  day  by  day  the  anguish  and  the  anger  of  his 
heart  at  the  national  humiliation  and  the  fraternal 
strife.  He  remembers  whose  son  he  is,  that  the  play- 
thing of  his  infancy  was  the  acorn  of  a  sword-hilt. 
If  he  describes  with  terrible  ghastly  vividness  the 
deserted  battlefields  where  the  dead  lie  in  pools  of 
blood,  writhed  in  distorted  forms  beneath  the  snow, 
yet  he  has  more  envy  than  pity  for  those  whom  fate 
permits  to  die  for  their  country  and  not  to  survive 
its  defeat.1  With  true  patriotic  instinct,  in  spite  of 
all  the  past  eighteen  years,  he  sees  in  Germany  the 
spirit  of  reaction  in  jealous  combat  with  the  spirit 
of  progress  and  enlightenment,  which  it  now  seems  to 
the  author  of  the  "  Scourgings  "  that  France  has  never 
ceased  to  represent.  He  wishes  he  were  not  French, 
that  he  might  choose  to  be  so  now.2  Darkness  and 
evil  have  indeed  achieved  a  transitory  triumph,  but  he 
is  confident  in  the  victory  of  the  vanquished,  —  the  ul- 
timate conquest  of  matter  by  the  ideal,  of  force  by 

1  Us  gisent  dans  le  champ  terrible  et  solitaire, 
Leur  sang  fait  une  mare  affreuse  sur  la  terre, 
Les  vautours  monstrueux  f ouillent  leur  ventre  ouvert ; 
Leurs  corps  farouches,  froids,  epars  sur  le  pre  vert, 
Eff  royables,  tordus,  noirs,  ont  toutes  les  formes 
Que  le  tonnerre  donne  aux  foudroye's  e'normes 

Us  sont  nus  et  sanglants  sous  le  ciel  pluvieux  : 
O  morts  pour  mon  pays,  je  suis  votre  envieux. 

(L'Annee  terrible,  t)ecembre,  viii.) 
2  Je  voudrais  n'etre  pas  francais  pour  pouvoir  dire 
Que  je  te  choisis,  France,  et  que  dans  ton  martyre, 
Je  te  proclame,  toi  que  ronge  le  vautour, 
Ma  patrie  et  ma  gloire  et  mon  unique  amour. 

(Ib.,  Decembre,  vii.     Cp.  also  ix.) 


246  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

reason.  Just  as  a  robin  has  built  its  nest  in  the 
mouth  of  the  monumental  lion  of  Waterloo,  "  peace  in 
the  horrible  jaws  of  war,"  so  this  defeat  shall  not  be 
ruin  but  genesis,  France  shall  be  a  spark  to  kindle  the 
German  forest  to  a  blaze  that  shall  enlighten  the 
world,  and  "trembling  kings  shall  see  liberty  gush 
forth  from  the  lance-thrust  in  her  side."1 

But  into  these  political  visions  there  comes,  like  the 
sound  of  a  distant  choir,  a  far-off  echo  of  the  domestic 
poems  of  the  "  Autumn  Leaves ; "  for  Jeanne,  his 
little  granddaughter  (later  Mme.  Le*on  Daudet),  shares 
and  cheers  the  weary  months  of  the  siege  of  Paris.3 
This  .contrast  between  the  domestic  and  public  life 
of  the  poet  is  managed  with  great  effect,  and  the 
verses  on  the  death  of  his  son  (Mars,  iii.,  iv.)  pre- 
pare the  way  for  poems  whose  wide  sympathy  em- 
braces even  the  errors  of  the  Communists.  "  I  cannot 
read,"  pleads  an  insurgent  arrested  in  his  attempt  to 
burn  the  National  Library.  Hugo  is  sure  that  if  we 
could  penetrate  beneath  this  Communistic  rage,  we 
should  find  its  discords  dissolving  into  the  solemn  chant, 
"  Let  us  love  one  another."  In  the  face  of  the  orgies 
of  burning  Paris  he  still  resists  with  all  his  power  the 
"  tragic  widening  of  the  tomb,"  he  still  pleads  for  the 
abolition  of  the  death  penalty.3 

But  if  deep  calls  to  deep  from  the  "  Chatiments  "  to 
the  "Terrible  Year,"  it  is  natural  that  this  higher 
inspiration  should  be  less  lasting  in  the  aged  Hugo, 

1  Et  la  paix  dans  la  gueule  horrible  de  la  guerre  .  .  . 
Est-ce  un  ecroulement?     Non.     C'est  une  genese  .  .  . 

Du  coup  de  lance  a  ton  cote 

Les  rois  tremblants  verront  jaillir  la  liberte. 

(L'Anne'e  terrible,  Juillet,  iii.,  xi.  2,  and  xi.  1.) 

2  Ib.,  Septembre,  v.,  Novembre,  x.,  Janvier,  xi.,  Juin,  xviii. 
8  See  Avril,  v.,  vi.,  ix. ;  Juin,  i.,  viii.,  xii.,  xiii. ;  Juillet,  ii. 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  247 

and  indeed  in  his  next  volume  it  had  quite  spent  its 
force.  "  L'Art  d'etre  grand-pere  "  is  a  continuation  and 
development  of  the  poems  to  Jeanne.  Here,  with 
childlike,  not  to  say  childish  simplicity,  he  tells  of 
"  the  sovereignty  of  innocent  things,"  and  how,  "  amid 
all  our  ills  that  come  like  veils  between  us  and  heaven, 
the  contemplation  of  a  deep  and  starry  peace  is  good 
and  healthful  to  our  minds."1  He  watches  Jeanne 
asleep,  and  finds  consolation  for  his  political  anxieties 
and  disappointments  in  the  fancied  visions  of  her  in- 
fancy. His  grandson  Georges  entices  from  him  the 
rather  banal  sentiment  that  "  our  sons'  sons  enrapture 
us."  It  was  well  perhaps  to  write,  but  was  it  well  to 
print,  that  toy  comedy  with  its  nursery  stammerings  ? 
But,  what  is  far  more  serious,  many  of  these  poems 
lack  the  ring  of  genuine  feeling ;  and  nothing  wearies 
more  surely  or  more  quickly  than  the  suspicion  of 
mock  simplicity.  Occasionally,  indeed,  we  catch  and 
welcome  a  gleam  of  politics  and  even  a  faint  echo  of 
satiric  thunder,  while  with  the  past  and  the  present 
there  is  mingled  in  larger  measure  than  heretofore  the 
future,  the  new  and  possibly  regenerate  world  in 
which  these  grandchildren  will  do  their  life-work. 

The  style  of  these  pieces,  like  their  subjects,  aims  at 
simplicity,  but  it  is  not  always  natural.  Short  sen- 
tences and  elliptical  constructions  mark  all  the  poetry 
and  prose  of  these  later  years,  but  nowhere  do  they  be- 
come such  mannerisms  as  here.  Take  for  instance  the 
following  lines  from  a  poem  on  the  beach  at  Guernsey. 

1  Certe  il  est  salutaire  et  bon  pour  la  pensee 

De  contempler  parfois  a  travers  tous  nos  maux, 
Qui  sont  entre  le  ciel  et  nous  comme  les  voiles, 
Une  profonde  paix  toute  faite  d'etoiles. 

(L'Art  d'etre  grand-pere,  I.  ii.) 


248  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Conjunctions  are  almost  wholly  suppressed,  quite  half 
the  verbs  are  omitted,  and  we  get  effects  like  this: 
"  Port  noises.  Whistles  of  engines  under  steam.  Mili- 
tary music  coming  in  puffs.  Bustle  on  the  quay. 
French  voices.  Merci.  Bon  jour.  Adieu.  It  must  be 
late,  for,  see !  my  red-breast  comes  close  up  to  me  to 
sing.  Noise  of  distant  hammers  in  a  forge.  Water 
splashes.  You  hear  a  steamer  puff.  A  tug  enters. 
Immense  panting  of  the  sea." l  Here  Hugo  is  not 
aiming  at  vigor,  but  at  fresh  simplicity.  He  adapts 
himself  easily  to  his  self-imposed  limitations,  using 
such  words  and  images  as  he  might  have  used  to 
Jeanne  or  Georges  as  they  tripped  along  beside  him, 
but  not  wholly  without  glimpses  of  the  grander 
powers  that  were  revealed  that  very  year  in  their  full 
splendor  in  the  second  "  Legend  of  the  Centuries." 

This  cyclic  poem  may  be  best  considered  here,  though 
its  concluding  part  did  not  appear  till  six  years  later. 
Its  subject  is  human  progress  through  all  the  centuries 
that  separate  Cain  from  Robespierre ;  its  inspiration  a 
robust  faith  in  human  destiny,  that  "sums  up  all 
aspects  of  humanity  in  one  vast  movement  toward  the 
light ; "  or,  as  he  himself  expresses  it,  his  book  shows 
"  the  slow  and  supreme  unfolding  of  Liberty  .  .  .  the 
rising  of  mankind  from  the  shadow  to  the  ideal."  It 
was,  as  he  said,  a  slow  growth,  like  a  cedar-tree  made 

1  Bruits  de  ports.    Sifflements  des  machines  chauffees. 
Musique  militaire  arrivant  par  bouffees. 
Brouhaha  sur  le  quai.     Voix  franchises.     Merci. 
Bonjour.    Adieu.     Sans  doute  il  est  tard,  car  voici 
Que  vient  tout  pres  de  moi  chanter  mon  rouge-gorge. 
Vacarme  de  marteaux  lointains  dans  une  forge. 
L'eau  clapote.     On  entend  haleter  un  steamer. 
Une  mouche  entre.     Souffle  immense  de  la  mer. 

(L'Art  d'etre  grand-pere,  I.  xi.) 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND    IN   TRIUMPH.  249 

to  endure,  and  indeed  it  contains  Hugo's  best  title  to 
poetic  immortality;  for  while  the  later  volumes  may 
show  some  falling  off  in  vigor,  they  bear  witness  to  a 
tenacious  persistency  in  upbuilding  the  original  con- 
ception. To  this  he  introduces  the  reader  by  "The 
Vision  whence  sprang  this  book"  (i.  9)  where  to  his 
typifying  mind,  that  makes  each  individual  a  symbol, 
history  presents  itself  as  a  series  of  pictures  illustrat- 
ing his  own  ethical  creed.  One  sees  here  how  much 
of  the  primitive  man,  of  the  myth-maker,  there  was  in 
Hugo's  nature.1  To  him  all  human  life  seems  under 
the  dominance  of  a  universal  antinomy,  Fate  and  God. 
But  if  this  thought  lights  up  the  obscurity  of  his 
"  Vision  "  of  the  centuries,  it  is  at  the  expense  of  their 
continuity.  What  had  first  seemed  a  wall  is  broken 
into  an  archipelago  on  which  his  fancy  sees  a  charnel 
palace,  built  by  fatality,  habited  by  death,  while  over 
it  hover  the  wings  of  hope  and  the  radiance  of  liberty. 
Out  of  this  vision  springs  his  "Legend  of  the  Cen- 
turies," his  "  bird's-eye  view  of  the  world." 

He  begins  naturally  with  mythology,  with  Hebrew 
and  Indian  legends  ;  then  turns  to  the  Olympians  and 
their  struggle  with  the  Titans,  in  which  he  sees  the 
conflict  of  mind  with  the  forces  of  nature.  But  in 
vanquishing  the  powers  of  earth  these  gods  enjoy  only 
a  mournful  triumph ;  for  the  world  has  lost  its  glad- 
ness, the  Bacchantes  have  torn  their  Orpheus,  and 
"  the  lions  mourn  the  absence  of  the  giants,"  until 
at  last  titanic  Nature  reasserts  itself  and  cries  to  the 
stupefied  Olympians,  "  0  gods,  there  is  a  God."  2 

1  Cp.  Lanson,  p.  1030. 

2  See  "  Les  Temps  paniques  "  and  "Le  Titan,"  especially  vol.  i.  pp. 
77,  78,  80,  94,  of  the  edition  definitive,  16mo,  to  which  all  subsequent 
references  apply. 


250  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

These  Greek  divinities,  creatures  of  idealist  aspira- 
tion, reappear  later  in  the  "Legend"  as  symbolic  of  the 
optimistic  pantheism  of  the  Eenaissance.  In  "Le 
Satyre  "  the  light-hearted  faun,  a  materialistic  hedonist 
with  the  "immodest  innocence  of  Ehea "  (iii.  5), 
confronted  by  the  Olympians,  sings  unabashed  of 
divine  chaos,  "  the  eager  spouse  of  the  infinite " 
(p.  14),  and  bids  the  gods  give  back  to  mankind 
the  age  of  gold  (p.  15),  from  which  beneath  their 
rule  the  race  has  degenerated,  "  burning  and  ravag- 
ing where  it  should  fertilize"  (p.  17).  But  there 
shall  be  a  renascence  from  this  fatality.  Casting 
aside  the  cloven  foot,  "man  shall  usurp  the  fire, 
mount  the  throne  "  (p.  21),  the  Eeal  shall  be  born 
again,  that  world  which  the  gods  have  conquered 
but  not  comprehended.  Then  there  shall  be  "place 
for  the  radiance  of  the  universal  soul  .  .  .  One  light, 
one  genius  everywhere,  an  all-embracing  harmony." 
And  the  Faun  closes  his  rhapsody  with  the  cry: 
"  Give  place  to  the  all !  I  am  Pan.  Jupiter,  kneel ! " 
(p.  23). 

Against  this  intoxication  of  democracy  and  arro- 
gance 'of  natural  instinct,  Hugo  introduces  Mahomet 
to  assert  the  pre-eminent  moral  verities,  the  personal 
oneness  of  God,  and  the  reality  of  the  higher  law. 
Asceticism,  too,  has  its  place,  though  a  small  one,  in 
the  poet's  vision.  Solomon's  conclusion  that  all  is 
vanity  is  turned  to  his  democratic  purpose  more  than 
once l  to  show  that  if  all  is  not  vanity,  kings  and  con- 
querors certainly  are.  The  worm  of  destruction  exists 
to  re-establish  equality,  "  to  preserve  the  balance ; "  but 


1  For  instance,  the  close  of  the  "  Sept  merveilles  du  monde,"  i.  283, 
and  "  L'^fcpope'e  du  ver,"  ii.  3,  with  "  Le  Poete  au  ver,"  ii.  25. 


HUGO  IN   EXILE   AND   IN  TRIUMPH.  251 

over  "  the  incorruptible  life,"  the  things  of  the  mind, 
it  has  no  power.1 

He  takes  his  types  of  royalty  from  the  monstrosi- 
ties. Xerxes,  Clytemnestra,  Attila,  the  French  Philippe 
le  Bel,  the  Spaniards  Sancho  and  Alphonso,2  best  suit 
his  purpose.  Among  his  heroes  the  Cid  holds  the  first 
place  for  his, magnanimous  loyalty  and  filial  devotion.3 
With  the  Franks,  Charles  and  Koland,4  are  associated 
the  less  familiar  names  of  Welf,  Aymerillot,  and  Evi- 
radnus,5  in  whom  are  incorporated  the  mediaeval  or 
possibly  Quixotic  spirit  of  men  who  were  "  kings  in 
India  and  barons  in  Europe,"  when  "at  the  waving 
of  their  swords  the  cries  of  eagles,  combats,  clarions 
of  battle,  kings,  gods,  and  epics  whirled  in  the  gloom," 
to  be  silent  of  grotesquer  feats.6 

Then  follow  several  pieces  on  the  Turks  that  recall 
the  brilliant  colors  of  the  "  Orientales "  thirty  years 
before,7  and  introduce  vivid  pictures  of  the  feudal 
cruelty  and  oppression  that  followed  the  heroic  age. 
Such  are  "  Les  Quatre  jours  d'Elciis"  (ii.  217),  and 
the  tragic  stories  of  Angus  and  of  the  children  of 

1 II  faut  bien  que  le  ver  soit  la  pour  1'equilibre  (ii.  9). 

La  vie  incorruptible  est  hors  de  ta  frontiers  .  .  . 

Tu  n'y  peut  rien  (Le  Poete  au  ver,  ii.  25). 
2  i.  109;  i.  105;  i.  125;  i.  169 ;  i.  137. 
8  i.  137-161,  209,  233,  249. 
4  i.  207,217;  ii.  33. 

6  ii.  193;  i.  223;  ii.  55. 

6  Rois  dans  1'Inde  ils  e"taient  en  Europe  barons, 
Et  les  aierles,  les  cris  des  combats,  les  clairons, 
Les  batailles,  les  rois,  les  dieux,  les  epope'es, 
Tourbillonnent  dans  1'ombre  au  vent  de  leurs  e'pe'es  (ii.  30). 
Here  too  we  may  find  archangels  wiping  their  swords  on  the  clouds 
(ii.  189)  and  ancient  chiefs  strangling  kings  and  using  their  bodies  as 
clubs  to  kill  emperors  (ii.  92). 

7  Especially  Zim-Zizimi  (ii.  97)  and  Sultan  Mourad  (ii.  111). 


252  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

Isora,1  whose  murderers  suffer  only  from  avenging 
Providence,  since  for  such  monster  kings  as  Tiphaine 
and  Eadbert  there  is  no  justice  on  earth.  In  more 
modern  times  the  Armada  evokes  a  noble  poem  (iii.  41), 
there  are  fierce  satires  on  royalty  and  especially  on 
Napoleon  III.  that  recall  the  finest  lines  of  "  Les  Cha'- 
timents," 2  while  the  glories  of  the  First  Empire  are 
recalled  by  the  memory  of  his  father's  magnanimity 
and  of  his  uncle's  heroism,  and  by  the  return  of  the 
ashes  of  the  great  Emperor  (iv.  23).3  Here,  too,  are 
utterances  of  the  noblest  patriotism,  together  with 
pathetic  pictures  of  childhood  and  somewhat  nebulous 
pseudo-philosophic  visions.4 

Though  the  "  Legend  "  is  ostensibly  epic,  there  runs 
through  it  all  a  personal  element  that  allies  it  to  lyric 
verse ;  and,  as  Brunetiere  remarks,  this  has  influenced 
the  choice  of  subjects  as  well  as  their  treatment.  The 
passion  of  the  poet  is  nearly  always  to  be  felt,  his 
thesis  nearly  always  obvious.  So  the  whole  lacks  the 
serenity  of  a  true  epic,  the  more  because  the  poet's 
convictions  are  less  intellectual  than  moral.  He  is 
borne  along  by  his  feelings,  not  the  master  of  them ; 
he  is  less  a  Baconian  observer  than  an  Orphic  seer, 
a  sort  of  "  primordial  force ; "  but  these  are  the  very 
qualities  that  make  him,  as  the  same  keen  critic  ob- 

1  L'Aigle  du  casque,  ii.  137  ;  La  Confiance  du  marquis  Fabrice,  ii' 
165. 

2  E.  g.,  Les  Mangeurs,  iii.  109  ;  La  Colere  du  bronze,  addressed  par- 
ticularly to  Morny,  iv.  67  ;  and  Le  Prisonnier  (Bazaine),  iv.  85.     In 
"La  Vision  de  Dante,"  iv.  139,  Pius  IX.  is  made  to  share  the  bad  emi- 
nence of  Napoleon. 

3  Apres  la^bataille,  iv.  51  ;  Le  Cimetiere  d'Eylau,  iv.  55. 

4  E.  g.,  L'Ele'gie  des  fleaux,  iv.  97 ;  Apres  les  fourches  claudines,  iv. 
89  ;  Le  Crapaud,  iv.  131 ;  Les  Petits,  iv.  197 ;  Vingtieme  siecle,  iv.  217; 
La  Trompette  de  jugement,  iv.  247. 


HUGO   IN   EXILE    AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  253 

serves,  "  not  perhaps  the  greatest  poet,  but  the  greatest 
lyrist  of  all  time." 

More  directly,  though  hardly  more  profoundly,  philo- 
sophic than  the  "  Legend,"  are  four  poems,  published 
between  1878  and  1880,  —  "  Le  Pape,"  "  Eeligions  et  la 
religion,"  "L'Ane,"  and  "  La  Pitid  supreme,"  which  may 
be  considered  together  so  far  as  they  need  to  be  consid- 
ered at  all.  The  first  of  them  is  the  least  unintelligible. 
His  ideal  Pope  should  symbolize  the  eternal  conscience 
of  God,  should  unite  all  the  elements  of  idealism  and 
virtue  as  Hugo  conceives  them.  He  should  abandon 
all  human  pomp  and  pride,  leave  Kome  itself,  and 
having  rebuked,  like  his  Master,  the  sycophants  of 
the  East,  should  stoop  to  the  lowliest  charity,  gather 
in  his  train  the  outcast  and  the  poor,  reconcile  men 
and  nations,  preach  the  mutual  duty  of  rich  and  poor, 
of  aid  and  of  gratitude,  advocate  Christian  socialism, 
condemn  capital  punishment  and  retaliation,  and,  in 
short,  realize  Hugo's  idea  of  a  true  "Imitation  of 
Christ,"  such  as  he  thought  illustrated  by  himself. 

"  Eeligions  and  Eeligion  "  undertakes  to  show  that 
any  creed  narrowly  comprehended  by  human  prejudice 
is  worse  in  its  effect  on  moral  character  than  all  un- 
belief. The  counterpart  of  this  paradox  is  presented 
in  "  L'Ane,"  which  would  prove  that  false  science  is 
worse  than  none ;  and  having  fallen  into  the  paradoxi- 
cal vein,  Hugo  borrows  another  from  Danton  to  make 
us  believe,  in  "  La  Pitie*  supreme,"  that  the  executioner 
is  more  worthy  of  pity  than  the  victim.  Even  the 
poet's  most  enthusiastic  admirers  are  wont  to  glide 
lightly  over  these  errors  of  the  old  man  eloquent. 

Hugo  had  still  in  his  portfolios  materials  for  the  last 
volume  of  his  "  Legend  "  and  for  "  Les  Quatre  vents  de 
Tesprit,"  parts  of  which  are  as  good  as  all  but  his  very 


254  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

best.  As  its  title  suggests,  this  last  of  the  poet's  col- 
lections shows  his  work  in  the  four  fields  of  satire, 
drama,  the  lyric,  and  the  epic.  The  first  is,  as  usual,  the 
best ;  for  he  is  right  in  saying  that  "  hatred  of  evil  and 
love  of  the  just  had  been  the  weapons  of  his  youth, 
and  his  shields  contempt  and  disdain,"  with  which  he 
had  striven  to  battle  against  every  oppressor  of  mind 
and  body.1  Perhaps  the  most  interesting  among  these 
pieces  is  the  final  statement  of  his  attitude  toward  the 
established  Church  and  his  once  cherished  middle  ages 
(i.  111).  This  confession  of  faith  or  of  the  lack  of  it  sur- 
prises at  once  by  its  vigor,  its  boldness,  and  its  nebulous 
indefiniteness.  Admirable,  too,  is  his  picture  of  a  rich 
church- warden  who  "  knows  that  a  good  God  is  quite 
essential  to  keep  the  hungry  people  quiet,"  and  is  "  proud 
to  feel  that  in  his  devotion  he  is  taking  the  masses  in 
his  leash  and  God  under  his  patronage."  2  One  dwells 
the  longer  on  this  first  part  because  Hugo's  dramatic 
"  wind "  blows  with  much  less  vigor,  and  hardly  ad- 
vances the  little  skiff  of  his  genius  toward  the  ever- 
fleeting  goal  of  his  dramatic  ambition. 

The  lyric  section,  like  the  satiric,  embraces  the  work 
of  forty  years,  and  hence  of  very  varied  moods.  There 
are  poems  where  all  Nature  has  a  gloomy  voice  and  the 

1  Vol.  i.  pp.  5,  25  (edition  of  1882,  to  which  reference  is  hereafter 
made). 

2  i.  34.     The  lines  cited  are :  — 

C'est  que  le  peuple  vil  croira,  le  voyant  croire, 
C'est  qu'il  faut  abrutir  ces  gens,  car  ils  ont  faim, 
C'est  qu'un  bon  dieu  quelconque  est  ndcessaire  enfin. 
La-dessus  rangez-vous,  le  suisse  frappe,  il  eutre, 
II  £tale  au  bane  d'ceuvre  un  majestueux  ventre, 
Fier  de  sentir  qu'il  prend  dans  sa  devotion, 
Le  peuple  en  laisse  et  Dieu  sous  sa  protection. 

Noteworthy  also  are  "  Idolatries  et  philosophies  "  (i.  118)  and  No.  XXV. 

(i.  96). 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  255 

sea  is  still  speaking  to  him  of  Le'opoldine,  while  in  his 
exquisite  "  Walks  among  the  Kocks  "  the  conviction  of 
divine  goodness  and  love  reaches  its  supreme  expres- 
sion.1 The  epic  section,  finally,  is  a  series  of  brilliant 
evocations  and  half-lyric  denunciations  of  the  short- 
comings of  royalty,  ending  like  "  Les  CMtiments  "  with 
a  bright  vision  of  the  future. 

A  drama,  "  Torquemada,"  closes  the  long  series  of 
works  given  to  the  press  by  Hugo,  who  seems  to  have 
regarded  it,  as  Goethe  did  the  second  part  of  "  Faust," 
as  a  sort  of  final  legacy  to  the  world,  "  his  grandest  con- 
ception," the  product  of  the  reflections  of  thirty  years. 
He  certainly  overestimated  it ;  for  though  it  has  many 
great  beauties,  it  is  quite  unsuited  to*  the  stage,  as  are 
also  his  posthumous  dramas  of  "  Le  Theatre  en  liberte." 
The  culminating  scene  of  this  poem  of  toleration,  the 
plea  of  the  Grand  Eabbi  before  their  Catholic  Majes- 
ties Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  is  indeed  a  masterpiece  of 
pathetic  eloquence.  But  the  work  should  be  classed 
with  the  philosophic  pieces  rather  than  with  the 
dramas,  and  so  leads  us  naturally  to  his  posthumous 
"  Fin  de  Satan,"  an  unfinished  epic  of  the  French  Eevo- 
lution,  to  which  Hugo,  like  most  of  his  countrymen, 
accords  a  cardinal  place  in  the  development  of  the 
human  mind  and  of  society. 

Here  the  venerable  poet  tells  how  Satan  had  made 
of  the  three  weapons  of  Cain,  the  nail,  the  rod,  and  the 
stone,  three  germs  of  crime,  the  sword,  the  gibbet,  and 
the  prison,  with  which  he  purposed  to  disfigure  the  face 
of  the  world.  But  a  white  plume,  a  remnant  of  Lucifer's 
glory,  remained  in  heaven,  and  under  the  glance  of  God 
became  the  angel  Liberty,  who  overcomes  not  only  the 
results  of  evil  but  its  very  spirit;  for  Satan  himself, 

1  Vol.  ii.  pp.  67,  74,  150. 


256  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

after  a  mighty  struggle,  sends  her  on  her  work  to  break 
the  Bastille,  to  release  its  skeleton  captives,  to  foster 
innocent  love,  and  to  emancipate  mankind.  An  unfin- 
ished section,  "  Le  Gibet,"  on  the  life  and  death  of 
Christ  has  parts  equal  in  vigor  to  any  previous  work 
of  the  poet ;  but,  as  is  admitted  even  by  Swinburne,  the 
material  framework  of  Hugo's  whole  conception  is  "  so 
self-contradictory,  so  inconsistent  in  its  accumulation 
of  incompatible  impossibilities,  that  we  cannot  even 
imagine  a  momentary  and  fantastical  acceptance  of  it." 

Of  four  other  posthumous  volumes,  "  Toute  la  lyre  " 
and  "Le  Theatre  en  liberteY'  it  has  been  said  that  if 
they  add  nothing  to  the  glory  of  Hugo,  neither  do  they 
detract  from  it.  Indeed  they  inspire  a  kind  of  awe  at 
the  huge  volume  of  his  perennial  productivity,  —  his 
"  enormous  torrent  of  speech,"  to  borrow  his  own  phrase 
of  Danton.  So  far  as  political,  social,  or  literary  ideas 
are  concerned,  the  thirty  thousand  lines  of  the  former 
work  only  repeat  what  he  had  already  said  many  times, 
much  of  which  was  commonplace  before  he  said  it  at 
all.  There  is  the  familiar  regiphobia,  the  belief  in 
fraternity,  progress,  perfectibility,  and  the  naive  desire 
that  he  and  his  Maker  should  come  to  a  better  under- 
standing for  the  good  of  the  human  race.  Here  as 
always,  perhaps  more  than  ever,  he  feels  his  apostleship 
and  its  burdens,  and  proclaims  both  with  an  exasper- 
ating iteration  of  the  capital  I. 

If  now  we  consider  Hugo's  place  in  French  literature, 
one  is  tempted,  with  Lemaitre,  to  call  him  "  the  mighti- 
est gatherer  of  words  since  the  world  began."  But  it 
needs  not  that  critic's  acuteness  to  discover  that  there 
is  far  too  much  repetition  in  his  work,  and,  after  "  Les 
Chatiments,"  little  intellectual  development.  The  fact 
is  that  the  young  Hugo  had  said  all  he  had  to  say  in 


HUGO   IN    EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  257 

or  before  the  "Autumn  Leaves,"  and  the  second  Hugo 
had  delivered  his  whole  message  before  1860.  On  the 
other  hand,  if  we  look  at  his  work  from  the  rhetorical 
standpoint,  his  management  of  words  and  images,  there 
is  no  loss,  perhaps  there  is  gain,  to  the  very  last.1 

Hugo  was  distinctly  an  average  man  both  intellectu- 
ally and  ethically.  He  had  the  rancor  and  vanity  of 
the  typical  bourgeois,  his  treasure  was  in  an  earthen 
vessel,  his  genius  wholly  disproportioned  to  his  mind. 
Hence  he  constantly  laid  himself  open  to  ridicule  and 
parody  by  fatuously  ignoring  innate  congruity  and  his- 
torical perspective.  It  is  as  though  Elijah's  mantle  had 
fallen  on  the  typical  philistine  to  whom  the  Bevolu- 
tion  divides  darkness  from  light,  and  "  humanity  is  an 
immense  Punch  and  Judy'  show."  2  So  utterly  naive 
is  his  self-complacency  that  he  seems  to  himself  to  be 
Mont  Blanc,  or  Atlas,  or  a  "torch  enlightening  the 
world."  But  at  the  same  time  he  has  the  good  qualities 
of  the  bourgeois.  He  seems  thoroughly  sincere  in  his 
domestic  affections,  and  he  did  not  relax  the  sustained 
ardor  of  his  literary  labor  for  sixty-nine  years,  practising 
what  he  had  preached,  "  amending  old  works  by  making 
better  ones  "  that  were  not  always  new. 

It  would  be  foolish  to  attempt  a  history  of  Hugo's 
ideas.  "  They  follow,  but  do  not  beget,  one  another." 
He  reflects  De  Vigny's  philosophy  of  history,  Gautier's 
Neo-Hellenism,  and  the  social  sympathies  of  Sand  and 
Michelet.  Indeed,  his  convictions  and  his  philosophy 
are  no  more  essential  elements  in  his  literary  individ- 

1  Cp.  Lemaitre,  Contemporains,  iv.  132,  to  whom  I  am  also  much 
indebted  in  what  follows. 

2  This  is  the  point  of  Lemaitre's  epigrammatic  "  Homais  a  Path- 
mos."     Veuillot's  "  Jocrisse  a  Pathmos,"  alluding  to  the  senile  loves 
of  the  "  Chansons  des  rues  et  des  bois,"  has  a  sharper  sting. 

17 


258  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

uality  than  is  the  color  of  the  chameleon.  What  is  his, 
and  his  only,  is  the  way  in  which  he  expresses  them, 
—  his  rhetoric,  his  prosody,  that  gathers  up  thought 
as  in  a  prism  and  divides  it  into  rainbow  hues.  For 
he  is  truly  golden-mouthed.  "No  poet  of  ancient  or 
modern  times  has  had  the  imagination  of  form  in  such 
abundance,  force,  precision,  grandeur,"  says  Lemaitre. 
"  He,  more  than  any  other,  had  the  glory  of  rejuvenat- 
ing the  imagination  and  renewing  the  language  of  his 
century." 

Here  his  work  is  less  contestable  than  in  politics  or 
sociology ;  and  it  is  here  alone  that  his  literary  influ- 
ence has  been  great  and  lasting.  It  is  necessary,  then, 
to  examine  briefly  wherein  lies  the  new  in  Hugo's 
rhetoric  and  in  his  management  of  verse.  And,  first 
of  all,  one  observes  that  if  Hugo  has  a  conspicuous 
lack  of  humor,  he  has  a  certain  kind  of  wit  that  shows 
itself  in  a  keen  relish  for  sharp  contrasts.1  The  most 
superficial  study  of  his  metaphors  illustrates  this. 
None  but  he  in  France  would  "put  a  liberty  cap  on 
the  dictionary  "  and  "  crush  the  spirals  of  paraphrase," 
or  "make  the  oratorical  style  shiver  in  its  Spanish 
ruff." 2  Such  wit  is  never  lofty,  but  it  is  often  effec- 
tive. Yet,  on  the  other  hand,  this  delight  in  incon- 
gruity, coupled  with  his  lack  of  humor,  has  betrayed 
him  more  than  once  into  grotesque  lapses  of  taste. 
But  whether  bridled  or  free,  his  intense  feeling  and 
vivid  imagination  poured  into  the  language  a  stream 
of  images,  new  or  forgotten,  that  broaden  from  the 

1  From  this  point  to  the  close  of  the  chapter  I  am  much  beholden 
to  Faguet,  xix.  siecle. 

2  Contemplations,  I.  i.  7.    The  whole  piece,  "  Response  a  uu  acte 
d'accusation,"  and  also  "Apropos  d'Horace"  (I.  i.  13)   abound  iu 
similar  phrases. 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  259 

" Orientales "  to  the  "Contemplations,"  and  form  the 
'mirror  of  Hugo's  peculiar  glory.  They  are  evolved 
from  no  mental  elaboration ;  they  seem  to  spring  from 
direct  sensations,  as  though  each  thought  were  born  in 
his  mind  with  a  train  of  attendant  similes.  Indeed, 
he  is  embarrassed  by  his  own  exuberance.  He  sees  so 
much,  so  many  suggestions  of  comparison  leap  to  his 
mind,  that  the  reader  will  often  be  dazzled  by  his 
fulness  or  perhaps  shocked  by  a  mixed  metaphor.1 
And  yet,  if  Proteus  will,  which  is  not  often,  he  can 
drop  this  garment  stiff  with  embroidery  and  gold,  and 
write  in  the  sustained  periods  and  polished  simplicity 
of  the  Classicists.  If  we  regard  only  the  expression, 
the  mode,  Hugo  is  unsurpassed,  not  alone  in  his  own 
peculiar  style,  but  in  almost  every  other. 

And  this  applies  almost  as  much  to  his  prosody. 
He  was  not  only  a  compeller  of  words,  but  a  master 
of  metre  and  rhythm,  and  here  at  least  a  master  that 
never  nodded.  So  perfect  was  his  ear  for  melody  that 
a  study  of  his  metres  is  almost  a  complete  course  in 
French  verse.  Men  with  greater  pretensions  have 
built  on  his  foundations;  but  neither  Banville  nor 
Verlaine  shows  a  more  delicate  instinct  of  the  relation 
of  sound  and  sentiment  than  Hugo.  He  has  at  his 
command  a  whole  tonic  scale  of  vowel  effects,  "  from 
grave  to  gay,  from  lively  to  severe,"  and  he  knows 
Wagner's  art  of  drawing  harmony  from  discord,  though 
his  delicate  shadings  will  often  elude  even  a  trained 
foreign  ear,  and  mock  the  artifices  of  the  modern  Sym- 
bolists who  try  to  reduce  to  rule  what  Hugo  attained 
by  instinct.  He  made  his  rhymes  and  his  metres,  as 
in  French  verse  they  should  be,  the  maid-servants  of 
rhythm.  He  did  not,  as  he  once  declared,  "  put  that 
1  See  Faguet,  1.  c.  p.  226,  for  numerous  examples. 


260  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

great  -stupid  alexandrine  out  of  joint."  Quite  other- 
wise. He  gave  it  new  life  and  elasticity  by  a  wise 
liberty  that  he  never  suffered  to  degenerate  into  license. 
He  made  it  so  flexible,  gave  it  such  variety,  that  it 
could  serve  the  most  manifold  needs.  But  while  he 
thus  enlarged  the  functions  of  this  classic  form,  no 
one  knew  so  well  as  he  in  an  endless  variety  of  lyric 
metres  to  give  orchestration  to  his  themes,  to  adapt 
cadence  to  sentiment  and  rhyme  to  reason,  if  indeed 
he  does  not  sometimes  make  the  one  do  duty  for  the 
other.  For  if  we  can  be  deaf  to  its  charm,  we  shall 
almost  always  see,  even  in  the  best  of  Hugo's  poetry, 
a  certain  haziness  of  thought  that  escapes  an  ultimate 
analysis. 

In  his  rendering  of  emotion  Hugo  is  uneven,  as  all 
who  attain  the  highest  reaches  are  sure  to  be.  He 
feels  so  intensely  about  some  things  that  he  sacrifices 
clearness  to  passion,  and  this  excited  expression  is 
apt  to  follow  him  as  a  mannerism  where  he  feels  very 
little ;  but  where  he  is  too  deeply  stirred  to  be  artifi- 
cial and  yet  keeps  his  self-control,  he  is  wholly  admi- 
rable. As  a  poet  of  love  he  seems  least  spontaneous, 
perhaps  because,  having  married  the  choice  of  his 
youth,  he  found  for  this  sentiment  other  outlets  than 
the  presses  of  his  publisher.  The  fireside  pieces  that 
alternate  with  the  amorous  ditties  in  the  "Autumn 
Leaves  "  give  the  latter  a  very  hollow  sound ;  and  in 
the  old  man's  "  Chansons "  there  is  less  passion  than 
joy  of  life. 

But  if  here  he  is  artificial  or  cold,  his  political 
satires,  though  not  without  lines  of  incoherent  pas- 
sion, show  him  at  his  best,  and  perhaps  supreme 
among  poets  because  of  his  absolute  though  incon- 
sistent sincerity.  The  pathetic  memorials  of  Villequier 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  261 

also  are  genuine  in  feeling  and  good  in  a  lesser  kind. 
But  later  there  grew  to  be  something  mechanical  in 
his  harping  on  the  pathetic  string,  and  in  u  L'Art  d'etre 
grand-pere  "  it  sinks  at  times  to  a  senile  puerility. 

The  whole  Republican  movement  that  culminated 
in  1848  had  been  nursed  in  glittering  generalities. 
Of  that  generation  Hugo  is  a  type,  perhaps  an  extreme 
type.  No  one  talks  more  persistently  than  he  of  jus- 
tice, humanity,  progress,  liberty,  the  people,  the  repub- 
lic, the  sublime  verities ;  but  he  is  at  no  pains  to  tell 
us  what  he  means  by  these  very  indefinite  terms. 
His  nebulous  socialism  reminds  one  of  the  "general 
warmth"  of  Jean  Paul.  He  likes  to  talk  of  great 
thinkers,  of  whose  company  he  clearly  regards  himself 
the  leader ;  and  he  indulges  in  lists  of  them  that  make 
the  judicious  grieve,  for  they  show  that  they  were  to 
him  little  more  than  names,  while  he  was  so  out  of 
touch  with  the  scientific  thought  of  his  later  years 
that  he  made  no  effort  to  understand  the  evolutionists 
he  affected  to  despise.1  Now,  as  Faguet  observes,  many 
great  poets  have  had  as  few  new  ideas  as  Hugo ;  but 
none  of  them  ever  persistently  proclaimed  that  they 
were  pre-eminently  men  of  ideas,  —  that  the  poet  was 
by  nature  prophet,  torch,  trumpet,  as  Hugo  loved  to 
call  himself,  though  he  might  rather  be  likened  to 
an  seolian  harp,  changing  his  note  with  each  new  politi- 
cal breeze.  And  yet  Hugo  is  always  as  sure  of  his 
unchanging  consistency  as  that  he  is  about  to  proclaim 
an  oracle  when  he  reiterates  a  commonplace.2 

What  literary  leadership  or  constructive  criticism 

1  For  instance,  "La  Legende  des  siecles,"  iv.  175  sqq. 

2  See  Faguet,  1.  c.  p.  183,  who  shows  that  Hugo  never  led  nor 
shared  in  the  creation  of  popular  sentiments,  but  always  followed  and 
reflected  them. 


262  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

was  to  be  expected  of  such  a  man  ?  At  what  did  he 
aim,  and  what  did  he  attain  ?  Again  the  early  and 
the  later  Hugo  are  as  wide  asunder  as  the  poles.  The 
preface  to  "  Cromwell "  assures  us  that  "  human  history 
presents  no  poetry  save  as  judged  from  the  height  of 
monarchical  ideas."  His  exile  was  to  reveal  to  him 
that  "  Eomanticism  and  Socialism  were  identical,"  and 
he  calmly  asserted  that  he  had  been  a  Socialist  since 
1828.  But  before  as  well  as  after  the  coup  d'etat 
he  was  possessed  with  the  fixed  idea  that  the  man  of 
letters  in  general,  and  himself  in  particular,  could  be 
and  ought  to  be  a  popular  leader,  —  a  view  that  seems 
derived  from  Madame  de  StaeTs  theory  that  "  literature 
is  the  expression  of  society."  This  may  explain  why 
his  own  work  has  nearly  always  a  social  thesis  clearly 
defined,  while  his  direct  literary  criticism  is  the  ex- 
treme of  vague  impressionism.  Here  he  was  as  in- 
ferior to  Gautier  as  he  was  superior  to  him  as  a  poet. 

Hugo's  originality,  then,  is  in  his  form.  He  is 
classic,  because  he  expresses  the  ideas  of  everybody  in 
the  language  of  the  elect.  Herein  lies  the  secret  of 
his  democratic  popularity:  he  glorifies  the  common- 
place, social,  moral,  philosophic ;  he  transfigures  it  by 
his  imagery,  till  he  gives  it  a  new  meaning  without 
taking  from  it  its  familiarity.  Herein  lies  the  excuse 
and  the  reason  for  the  repetitions  of  his  later  volumes. 
The  range  of  the  commonplace  is  naturally  limited; 
but  his  amplifications  and  brilliant  illustration  of  his 
trite  discoveries  are  so  rich  as  almost  to  make  his  old 
truth  seem  new.  He  is  also  wonderfully  vivid  in  his 
direct  descriptions,  and  the  strength  of  his  dramas  is 
in  "  local  color  "  rather  than  in  character,  in  picture 
rather  than  in  narrative.  But  far  more  remarkable  than 
this  is  the  poetic  personification  of  inanimate  objects. 


HUGO   IN   EXILE   AND   IN   TRIUMPH.  263 

He  imparts  a  more  genuine  life  and  individuality  to 
his  Notre-Dame  than  to  Esmeralda  or  Frollo,  less  to 
Gilliatt  than  to  the  rocks  on  which  he  won  his  tragic 
triumph.  Chateaubriand  and  Lamartine  had  fore- 
shadowed this  art,  but  Hugo  first  realized  potentialities 
t  hat  were  pushed  by  Zola  perhaps  beyond  their  natural 
limits.1 

It  is  clear  that  these  are  epic  qualities ;  and  Hugo 
would  be  a  great  epic  poet  if  his  intrusive  egoism  did 
not  constantly  mar  the  impersonality  of  his  narration. 
But  in  this  attempt  to  fuse  the  epic  with  the  lyric  the 
latter  dominates,  because  of  his  exquisite  feeling  for 
form  and  his  love  of  it  for  its  own  sake.  He  delights 
in  symmetrical  arrangements,  in  parallels  not  alone 
of  phrases,  but  of  strophes  and  even  of  whole  poems, 
which  he  places  over  against  one  another ;  he  revels  in 
such  prosodical  tours  de  force  as  the  "  Pas  d'armes  du 
roi  Jean  "  or  "  Les  Djinns,"  in  development  by  multi- 
plied images,  and  in  striking  rhetorical  effects  of 
antithesis  and  climax. 

Intellectually  Hugo  is  related  to  De  Stael;  as  an 
artist  he  has  more  of  Chateaubriand.  He  is  more  pur- 
poseful than  Lamartine,  more  robust  than  De  Vigny ; 
his  personal  will  is  more  obvious,  his  effort  more 
laborious  and  sustained.  He  has  his  eye  more  con- 
stantly on  the  public,  and  would  not  gladly  "  reserve 
his  laurels  for  posterity,"  that,  as  Byron  remarks, "  does 
not  always  claim  the  bright  reversion."  He  is  a  great 
writer  rather  than  a  great  author,  but  his  faults  are  of 
the  kind  that  will  least  affect  his  popularity.  For 
these  are  obvious  only  to  the  cultured,  but  his  merits 
appeal  to  all,  and  especially  to  the  democratic  masses, 
in  whom  he  rouses  vague  sympathies  that  others  will 
1  See  chap.  xii. 


264  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

translate  into  action.  More  than  any  French  lyric 
or  epic  poet  that  preceded  him,  and  more  than  any 
that  has  yet  followed,  he  continues  to  hold  the  great 
public.  All  schools  of  modern  verse  that  have  arisen 
in  the  last-half  century  may  call  him  "  father,"  and  he 
will  long  continue  to  form  the  rhetorical  and  poetical 
taste  of  French  youth.  And  it  is  well  that  it  should 
be  so ;  for,  as  one  of  the  younger  critics  of  our  day  has 
said,  "  While  others  have  troubled,  weakened,  disen- 
chanted the  human  heart,  Hugo  has  reassured,  estab- 
lished, encouraged  it.  He  has  communicated  to  it 
something  of  his  own  robust  and  obstinate  virtue."  1 

1  Pellissier,  p.  277. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      265 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY  AND  CRITICISM. 

IT  has  been  said  that  during  the  latter  period  of  his 
life  Hugo  barred  but  did  not  deflect  the  current  of 
literary  evolution.  We  have  now  to  examine  what 
was  the  nature  and  direction  of  that  current ;  and  if, 
as  seems  certain,  the  predominating  influence  has  been 
scientific,  it  is  by  studying  those  departments  of  litera- 
ture that  are  most  closely  related  to  science  that  we 
shall  gain  the  clew  to  the  course  of  development  in  the 
regions  of  pure  art.  Never  has  literature  been  more 
under  the  influence  of  philosophy,  never  have  critics 
been  more  frankly  recognized  as  the  guides  and  repre- 
sentatives of  French  culture.  It  is  to  these  that  the 
literature  of  our  scientific  age  looks  for  guidance  and 
inspiration,  just  as  the  Romantic  period  lent  the  intox- 
ication of  its  imagination  to  history,  which  under  the 
new  spirit  has  almost  ceased  to  belong  to  literature 
at  all.  The  Romantic  historians,  then,  will  form  the 
most  suitable  starting-point  for  an  investigation  of 
the  general  trend  of  poetry,  drama,  and  fiction  during 
the  generation  of  Hugo's  exile  and  triumph.1 

One  of  the  direct  results  of  the  impulse  given  to 
letters  by  De  Stael  and  Chateaubriand  was  the  enfran- 

1  Of  course  it  is  only  with  historians,  philosophers,  or  critics,  in 
their  relation  to  literature,  that  we  have  to  do ;  hence  Cousin  and  Comte 
are  passed  over,  while  Taine  and  Kenan  take  a  prominent  place ;  hence, 
too,  Michelet  occupies  the  chief  place  among  historians,  while  Martin 
is  not  named. 


266  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

chisement  of  historical  curiosity,  for  one  cannot  yet 
call  it  science;  and  this  curiosity  was  greatly  stimulated 
by  the  political  conditions  that  accompanied  the  rise 
of  the  Eomantic  School.  In  the  seventeenth  and 
eighteenth  centuries  history,  even  that  of  France,  had 
been  much  neglected ;  but  the  children  of  the  Kevolu- 
tion  were  eager  to  know  the  wrongs  and  struggles  of 
their  ancestors,  and  hailed  with  enthusiasm  the  ro- 
mances of  Walter  Scott  and  Chateaubriand's  brilliant 
"Martyrs."  Signs  of  an  historical  revival  multiply 
in  the  decade  preceding  the  Eevolution  of  1830. 
Great  collections  of  memoirs  were  printed  ; 1  and  these, 
with  the  accumulated  treasures  of  the  Benedictines, 
were  philosophically  and  scientifically  analyzed  by 
Guizot  and  De  Tocqueville,  who  belong  rather  to 
history  than  to  literature,  as  do  Thiers  and  Mignet, 
though  the  latter  has  much  art  in  the  luminous 
grouping  of  details. 

Sucli  part  of  the  work  of  Augustin  Thierry  2  as  was 
inspired  by  his  sympathy  with  the  bourgeois  monarchy 
of  the  Orleanists  falls  also  outside  our  limits,  but  he 
was  early  diverted  by  the  affectionate  study  of  mediae- 
val documents  to  a  more  artistic  end.  He  who  had 
spent  his  youth  devouring  the  pages  of  Chateaubriand 
and  his  young  manhood  in  the  eager  study  of  Walter 
Scott,  in  whom,  as  he  himself  tells  us,  "  Ivanhoe " 
caused  transports  of  enthusiasm,  was  now  to  com- 
municate that  same  enthusiasm  to  his  countrymen  by 
his  "  Stories  of  the  Merovingians  "  and  his  "  Conquest 


1  Some  two  hundred  and  thirty  volumes  in  all,  among  them  the 
Me'moires  de  Saint-Simon. 

2  Born  1795 ;  died  1856.  The  "  Lettres  sur  1'histoire  de  France,"  1827. 
"  Etudes  historiques,"  1834,  and  "  Histoire  du  tiers-etat,"  1853,  hardly 
belong  to  literature. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      267 

of  England."  It  was  his  mission,  he  said,  "to  plant 
in  France  the  banner  of  historical  reform,  to  wage 
war  alike  on  the  writers  without  learning  to  see  and 
the  writers  without  imagination  to  reproduce,"  who 
"  travestied  facts,  denaturalized  characters,  and  overlaid 
all  with  a  color  as  vague  as  it  was  false."  The  seven- 
teenth century  had  treated  history  as  literature,  the 
eighteenth  called  it  philosophical ;  Thierry  made  it 
scientific  by  a  profound  study  of  the  sources,  and  lit- 
erary by  the  life  with  which  he  infused  the  relics  of 
a  forgotten  past.  To  Voltaire  Merovingian  history 
had  been  a  "  bear-garden."  Thierry's  imagination  con- 
structed from  it  a  series  of  elaborate  pictures  to  which 
every  available  document  had  contributed  its  detail 
of  feature,  dress,  or  manners  ;  while  to  it  all  he  added  a 
sympathy  with  the  people  and  with  the  popular  cause 
that  would  have  been  impossible  in  pre-Eevolutionary 
France. 

The  same  picturesqueness  is  found  in  Barante,  and 
the  same  sympathy  with  the  oppressed ;  but  the  great- 
est evoker  of  the  past  that  the  Romantic  School  or 
indeed  France  ever  produced  is  Michelet,1  who  both 
by  birth  and  sympathy  represented  the  democratic 
and  anti-clerical  masses,  as  Guizot  and  Thiers  did  the 
Orleanist  bourgeoisie.  But  in  him  more  than  in  any 
other  historian  of  France  literary  imagination  inter- 

1  Born  1798 ;  died  1874.  He  was  the  son  of  a  printer  of  Paris,  and 
began  literary  work  by  a  summary, "  Precis  de  1'histoire  moderne,  1828." 
His  most  noteworthy  historical  works  are  ;  Proces  des  templiers,  1841- 
1852;  La  Sorciere,  1862  ;  Histoire  de  France,  28  vols.,  1833-1867; 
Histoire  du  xix.  siecle,  1876;  and  outside  the  historical  field,  L'Oiseau, 
1856;  L'Insecte,  1857;  L' Amour,  1858;  La  Femme,  1859;  La  Mer, 
1861  ;  La  Montagne,  1868. 

Criticism :  Corread,  Michelet  (Classiques  populaires) ;  Faguet,  xix. 
siecle  ;  Saintshury,  in  Encylopaedia  Britannica. 


268  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

penetrates  and  vivifies  vast  erudition,  till  in  the  alembic 
of  his  mind  documents  become  poetry  and  history 
intuition.  At  the  rifled  cathedral  tombs  of  Saint  Denis 
he  feels  and  makes  us  feel  the  dead  kings  beneath  the 
marble  slabs,  till  like  genii  they  rise  before  our  fancy,  — 
Dagobert,  Chilperic,  and  "  the  fair,  the  blond,  the  ter- 
rible Fredegonde."  His  palpitating  sympathy  makes 
him  contemporary  of  each  epoch  as  he  writes  of  it.  He 
thrills  now  with  the  faith  of  Bernard,  now  with  the 
patriotism  of  the  Maid  of  Orleans ;  with  the  Reforma- 
tion he  becomes  a  Protestant,  and  a  democratic  icono- 
clast with  the  Revolution.  Like  Carlyle,  he  is  always 
present  in  his  history,  explaining,  animating,  pleading. 
The  rush  of  his  narration  so  carries  away  the  reader  that 
serious  omissions  pass  unheeded  and  inaccuracies  of 
style  are  forgiven.  The  whole  is  delightful,  stimulating, 
for  all  its  obvious  faults  of  proportion,  and  in  spite  of 
special  pleading  that  would  be  disingenuous  if  one 
did  not  feel  that  with  him,  as  with  Carlyle,  the  preju- 
dice and  the  hate  are  part  of  the  man  that  it  would 
change  his  whole  nature  to  eliminate. 

To  him  France  is  an  entity,  a  living  being.  It  is 
"  a  soul  and  a  personality  "  of  which  he  undertakes  the 
history.  Hence  he  is  led  to  study  with  peculiar  care 
those  traces  that  climate  and  physical  environment 
have  left  on  racial  character.  He  delights  to  paint 
the  common  people  in  their  daily  life,  making  the 
heroic  natural  and  the  sublime  comprehensible  by  the 
minute  reality  of  his  sympathetic  art,  that  from  myriad 
documentary  details  could  give  past  centuries  new 
birth.  Through  his  official  position  as  guardian  of  the 
National  Archives  he  found  open  to  him  an  almost 
unexplored  mine,  rich  in  precious  details  of  mediaeval 
manners,  which  under  another's  hand  might  have  re- 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      269 

mained  as  dry  as  the  dust  that  had  gathered  on  them, 
but  beneath  nis  touch,  transformed  by  his  imagination 
and  irradiated  by  his  unique  style,  charmed  the  world 
by  their  unexpected  revelations. 

It  was  natural  that  his  romantic  and  lyric  genius 
should  show  itself  best  where  it  had  greatest  scope,  in 
the  middle  ages.  The  episodes  of  Saint  Louis,  of  the 
Albigensian  crusade,  and  especially  the  chapters  on 
Joan  of  Arc,  with  the  superb  "tableau  de  France" 
that  opens  the  second  volume  of  his  history,  are  proba- 
bly the  finest  portions  of  all  the  vast  work.  Very 
characteristic  too  of  Michelet's  genius  are  his  curious 
study  of  the  trial  of  the  Knights-Templars,  and  that 
rhapsody  of  denionology,  "La  Sorciere,"  whose  first 
part  has  been  justly  called  a  "nightmare  of  extra- 
ordinary verisimilitude  and  poetic  power."  But  unfor- 
tunately, before  he  had  completed  this  period  of  his 
history,  a  second  and  much  less  happy  manner  was 
inaugurated  by  a  course  of  lectures  against  the  Jesuits 
delivered  at  the  College  de  France  in  1838.  These  were 
so  violent  that  the  government  felt  forced  to  inter- 
fere, but  not  until  the  agitation  had  attained  a  popu- 
larity that  is  reflected  in  Sue's  well-known  "  Juif  errant " 
(1844-1845).  But  though  in  these  lectures  the  dem- 
ocrat and  the  Huguenot  get  the  better  of  the  historian, 
the  eccentricity  of  his  arguments  has  not  affected  their 
eloquence  or  their  sincerity.  Yet  it  is  clear  that  from 
this  time  his  work  grows  more  partisan,  and  by  its 
plebeian  and  anti-clerical  fanaticism  loses  somewhat 
in  interest  and  still  more  in  historical  value,  though 
it  gained  in  immediate  effect,  for  its  exaggerated  sym- 
bolism flattered  and  fostered  the  aspirations  of  the 
Socialists  of  1848.  Now  and  again  such  deeds  as  the 
taking  of  the  Bastille  will  evoke  his  old  poetic  vision ; 


270  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

but  he  seldom  speaks  of  the  Kevolution,  or  even  of  the 
Renascence,  without  suffering  party  passion  to  mar  the 
calm  beauty  of  his  picture.  He  even  came  to  apologize 
for  his  treatment  of  the  middle  ages,  fearing  that  he 
had  been  too  sympathetic  with  the  Christian  spirit.1 
It  has  been  epigram  matically  said  of  him  that  he  for- 
got his  history  when  he  wrote  politics,  but  not  his 
politics  when  he  wrote  history. 

His  political  views  drove  him  from  his  archives 
and  his  professor's  chair  after  Napoleon's  coup  d'etat  ; 
arid  this  was  not  without  gain  to  literature,  for  his 
poetic  spirit  found  inexhaustible  consolation  in  studies 
of  nature.  Not  in  Chateaubriand  nor  in  Saint-Pierre 
shall  we  find  the  sensitive  sympathy  that  thrills 
through  Michelet's  prose  poems  of  "  The  Bird,"  "  The 
Insect,"  "The  Sea,"  and  "The  Mountain."  But  here 
too  he  fell,  as  the  French  proverb  has  it,  in  the  direc- 
tion to  which  he  inclined ;  and  the  vices  of  his  quali- 
ties are  painfully  manifest  in  "  L'  Amour"  and  "La 
Femme,"  errors  from  which  a  more  developed  sense  of 
humor  would  surely  have  saved  him.  It  is  to  these 
studies  aside  from  the  main  work  of  his  life  that  "  La 
Sorciere  "  belongs,  and  also  the  posthumous  "  Banquet," 
a  most  vigorous  and  specious  socialistic  pamphlet. 

Michelet's  historical  style  is  more  striking  than 
flowing.  It  advances  by  leaps  and  bounds,  not  by 
careful  development.  Its  succession  of  vivid  evoca- 
tions appeals  primarily  to  the  emotions,  and  their 
power  lies  not  in  the  thought  alone,  but  also  in  its 
rhythmic  expression.  Such  staccato  sentences  produce 
their  best  effect  when  read  aloud  with  oratorical  em- 
phasis. But  when  with  a  poet's  fancy  he  writes  of 

1  A  curious  witness  to   his  anti-Christian  violence  is  contained  in 
"Revue  bleue,"  June,  1895  (p.  731). 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      271 

nature,  or  perchance  of  physio-psychology,  his  style 
becomes  more  supple,  undulating,  musical,  less  ob- 
viously rhetorical,  more  subtly  rhythmical,  of  indefina- 
ble charm  and  exquisite  art.  These  are  qualities  that 
will  assure  Michelet  an  enduring  place  in  the  litera- 
ture of  his  generation  when  the  histories  of  his  more 
cautious  and  impartial  but  less  picturesque  contem- 
poraries shall  have  been  superseded  by  still  closer 
diplomatic  investigations,  and  yet  more  rigid  applica- 
tion of  that  historical  method  which  has  been  a  natural 
and  inevitable  result  of  the  scientific  evolution.  Ours 
is  the  history  of  a  Naturalistic  period.  Michelet, 
whether  he  would  or  no,  was  more  than  any  other 
the  Romantic  historian. 

The  Naturalistic  evolution  has  doubtless  been  a  gain 
to  history  as  a  science,  but  it  has  been  at  the  cost  of 
its  literary  value.  The  new  spirit  of  accurate  analysis 
admits  of  no  generalizing  theorists  like  Guizot,  and 
would  smile  at  such  lyrists  as  Michelet.  It  subordi- 
nates with  a  stern  self-abnegation  the  dulce  to  the 
utile.  We  have  great  historical  investigators,  great 
historians  perhaps  in  modern  France,  but  not  a  great 
historical  literature.1  The  scientific  spirit  has  carried 
its  analysis  so  far  that  a  just  synthesis  becomes  al- 
most beyond  human  grasp.  Never  have  single  move- 
ments or  periods  been  studied  with  more  zeal  or  acu- 
men; yet  our  diligent  investigators  do  not  command 
the  place  in  literature  or  in  popular  esteem  that  was 
won  by  their  Romantic  predecessors. 

But  while  history  was  being  thus  transformed,  an 
evolution  as  fundamental  and  even  more  important  to 

1  Taine's  "  Ancien  regime  "  is  not  history  so  much  as  philosophical 
criticism  of  history.  Louis  Blanc's  voluminous  work  belongs  rather  to 
the  category  of  demagogic  declamation. 


272  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

the  development  of  literature  had  shown  itself  in 
criticism.  Literary  historians  and  self-constituted  law- 
givers there  had  been  since  the  days  of  the  Pleiad,  and 
they  had  been  men  of  no  mean  talent  and  industry, 
but  they  lacked  the  scientific  spirit  and  the  compara- 
tive method  that  are  the  peculiar  boast  of  modern 
French  criticism  and  give  it  a  unique  place  in  the 
literatures  of  Europe.  Nowhere  else  do  we  find  that 
criticism  attracted  such  talents  or  gained  such  rewards 
both  of  money  and  of  fame.  It  is  therefore  of  peculiar 
interest  to  trace  the  brief  evolution  of  this  genre  in 
France,  the  more  as  it  is  here  that  we  must  seek  the 
key  to  past  development  and  the  clew  to  the  imme- 
diate future.1 

French  comparative  criticism  may  be  said  to  begin 
for  history  with  Voltaire's  "  Essay  on  Manners  "  and 
for  sociology  with  Montesquieu's  "Spirit  of  Laws." 
But  it  was  not  till  the  eve  of  our  own  century  that 
Madame  de  Stael  applied  these  principles  to  books  in 
her  "  Literature  Considered  in  its  Connection  with 
Social  Constitutions  "  (1800),  and  enforced  the  lesson 
with  her  ripest  powers  in  "  L'Allemagne "  (1813). 
She  first  made  criticism  cosmopolitan,  and  her  method 
was  continued  by  Barante  (1782-1866),  and  then,  more 
ably,  by  Villemain  (1790-1870),  who  was  supreme  in 
this  field  from  the  Eestoration  till  the  rise  of  Eoman- 
ticism.  He  taught,  as  Madame  de  Stael  had  done, 
that  literature  was  the  expression  of  society,  and 
he  sought  to  prove  this  by  elaborate  though  partial 
and  superficial  studies  of  the  middle  ages  and  of  the 

1  See  £mile  Faguet  in  Petit  de  Julleville,  Histoire  de  la  langue  et 
de  la  litterature  francaise,  viii.  358-440,  aud  Hatzfeld  and  Meunier, 
Les  Critiques  litteraires  du  xix.  siecle,  Introduction,  which  distin- 
guishes aesthetic,  moral,  historic,  and  psychologic  criticism,  and  favors 
a  fusion  of  them  all. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      273 

eighteenth  century.  But  his  learning  had  much  more 
breadth  than  depth,  and  the  comparative  method  be- 
trayed him  at  times  into  shallow  generalizations.  Still, 
Villemain  is  always  interesting  and  sometimes  stirring, 
as  might  be  expected  from  a  professor  of  eloquence  in 
the  national  university.  But  with  the  founding  of  the 
"  Globe  "  and  the  gathering  of  the  Cenacles  the  current 
of  criticism  divides.  One  branch  lingers  in  the  sluggish 
channels  of  an  objective  dogmatism,  that  suits  so  well 
the  love  of  system  and  logic  deeply  rooted  in  French 
character ;  while  the  other  branch,  full  of  the  subjec- 
tive spirit  that  had  been  the  chief  factor  in  the  Ko- 
mantic  reform,  sacrifices  dogma  to  intuition  and  some- 
times consistency  to  freedom. 

Among  the  representatives  of  the  objective  group 
Nisard  (1806-1888)  led  the  forlorn  hope  of  the  deca- 
dent Classicists,1  while  the  Swiss  Protestant,  Vinet, 
sought  a  similar  objective  standard  in  morals.  Thus 
both  persisted  in  measuring  literature  by  abstract 
rules,  by  absolute  canons  of  art  or  ethics ;  and  both 
turned  their  eyes  with  dogmatic  steadfastness  from  the 
personality  of  the  author  whose  work  they  criticised. 
"  I  could  not  love,"  said  Nisard,  "  without  preferring, 
and  I  could  not  prefer  without  doing  injustice."  This 
cold,  martinet  spirit  marks  itself  in  them  arid  in  their 
successors  by  impatience  of  irregular  genius.  It  has 
always  sought  its  ideals  in  the  cold  correctness  of  the 
School  of  1660.  Nisard  and  all  who  have  followed 
him,  especially  Brunetiere,  feel  and  show  a  haughty 
contempt  for  the  generous  but  sometimes  inconsistent 
appreciations  of  those  who  base  their  critical  opinions 
on  subjective  impressions.  Criticism  like  Nisard's  is 
an  art  that  can  be  taught ;  subjective  criticism  is 

l  E.  g.,  in  the  "  Litterature  fran9aise,"  1844-1849,  and  1861. 

18 


274  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

from  its  nature  individual,  good,  or  valueless  accord- 
ing to  the  critic.  Of  this  school  Sainte-Bauve  was  the 
creator  and  is  still  the  unchallenged  master. 

It  was  the  good  fortune  of  the  Eomanticists  to 
count  almost  from  the  first  in  their  inner  circle,  and 
always  among  their  sympathizers,  one  of  the  greatest 
critics  of  all  time,  one  of  the  most  generously  apprecia- 
tive, catholic-minded  men  that  France  has  brought 
forth.  None  of  them  exercised  a  wider  or  more  bene- 
ficent influence.  Born  at  Boulogne  of  half-English 
parentage,  Sainte-Beuve  (1804-1869)  1  made  brilliant 
medical  studies  at  Paris,  began  in  1824  to  write  for  "  Le 
Globe  "  short  critical  articles,  the  present  "  Premiers 
lundis,"  and  in  1827  found  his  true  vocation  on  its 
critical  staff.  Warm  sympathy  earned  him  the  friend- 
ship of  Hugo,  and  his  genius  won  the  praise  of  Goethe. 
To  his  work  in  these  apprentice  years  is  due,  more 
than  to  that  of  any  man  else,  the  revival  of  an  intel- 
ligent interest  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  especially 
in  Ronsard,  a  selection  from  whose  works  he  edited  in 
1828.  Such  studies  stirred  his  own  poetic  vein,  and, 
led  perhaps  by  the  feeling  that  he  would  criticise  better 
what  he  had  himself  attempted,  he  published  in  1 829 
"  La  Vie,  poe'sies  et  pensdes  de  Joseph  Delorme,"  a  sort 
of  Jacobin  Werther-Rene',  for  whose  sentimental  sorrows 

1  Critical  works :  Tableau  historique  de  la  poesie  frar^aise  au  xvi. 
siecle,  1828  ;  Critiques  et  portraits  litteraires,  5  vols.,  1832-1839  ;  Port- 
Koyal,  5  vols.,  1840-1860;  Portraits  litteraires,  2  vols.,  1844;  Portraits 
contemporains,  2  vols.,  1846;  Chateaubriand  et  son  groupe  litteraire, 
sous  1'empire,  2  vols.,  1860;  Causeries  du  lundi,  15  vols.,  1851-1862; 
Nouveaux  lundis,  13  vols.,  1863-1869;  Premiers  lundis,  3  vols.,  pub- 
lished posthumously. 

Criticism:  D'Haussonville,  Sainte-Beuve,  sa  vie  et  ses  oeuvres; 
Levallois,  Sainte-Beuve;  Brunetiere,  Evolution  des  genres,  i.  217,  and 
Poe'sie  lyrique,  i.  217;  Taine,  Nouveaux  essais,  p.  51 ;  G.  M.  Harper, 
Charles-Augustin  Sainte-Beuve. 


THE   EVOLUTION    OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      275 

the  author  apologized  next  year  in  a  volume  of  "  Con- 
solations." One  more  volume  of  verse,  "  Les  Pensdes 
d'Aout "  (1837),  completes  his  wooing  of  a  refractory 
muse.  He  had  not  poetic  imagination.  Though  he 
anticipated  at  times  the  popular  note  of  Coppe'e  and 
Manuel,  there  is  something  decidedly  prosaic,  common- 
place, in  the  sentiments  that  he  solemnly  confesses  at 
the  first,  and  toys  with  to  the  last.  Even  in  his 
poetry  he  is  a  critic  of  his  own  sensations,  but  these 
are  not  curious  or  rare  enough  to  deserve  such  anal- 
ysis. Still,  if  the  "  Poe'sies  "  and  the  "  Pense'es  "  were 
perhaps  not  worth  printing,  they  were  worth  writing, 
for  they  contributed  to  make  him  one  of  the  keenest 
analysts  of  moral  nature,  whether  in  men  or  in  books. 
And  doubtless  they  contributed  essentially  to  the 
work  he  was  afterward  to  accomplish  for  the  enrich- 
ment of  the  French  poetic  vocabulary  and  the  supple 
variety  of  its  rhymes.  He  justified  critically  what 
Hugo  had  felt  instinctively.  The  truest  illustrations 
of  his  principles  are  not  to  be  found  in  his  own  poems, 
but  in  the  "  Funambulesques "  of  Banville  and  the 
"Fleurs  du  mal"  of  Baudelaire. 

In  prose  fiction  Sainte-Beuve  made  but  one  essay, 
"Volupte"'  (1824).  To  him  this  form  of  expression 
proved  as  unsatisfactory  and  more  laborious  than  verse 
itself.  He  heeded  the  admonition  of  his  double  failure, 
and  devoted  himself  to  pure  criticism  in  lectures  and 
literary  reviews,  while  slowly  elaborating  his  "History 
of  Port  Royal,"  a  work  for  which  his  post  as  a  Conser- 
vator of  the  Mazarin  Library  gave  him  both  leisure  and 
opportunity,  till  the  Revolution  of  1848  deprived  him  of 
this  sinecure,  and  so  led  him  to  a  brief  professorship  at 
the  Belgian  university  of  Liege  which  he  made  illus- 
trious by  his  lectures  on  Chateaubriand,  the  first  ripe 


276  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

product  of  his  genius.  But  in  1849  he  returned  to  Paris 
and  began  the  famous  "  Causeries  du  lundi,"  weekly 
critical  articles  in  a  conversational  tone,  that  extended 
with  some  intermissions  almost  to  his  death,  and  give 
him  his  chief  title  to  the  grateful  remembrance  of  all 
students  of  French  literature.  Though  he  was  nomi- 
nated a  senator  in  1865,  he  took  but  little  interest  in 
the  politics  of  his  time  except  in  so  far  as  they  affected 
free  thought.  But  this  complete  devotion  to  his  pro- 
fession in  years  of  oppression  and  ferment  earned  him 
the  dislike  of  the  student  body,  and  they  drove  him 
from  his  lectureship  at  the  Ecole  Normale  (1854). 
Gradually,  however,  his  sturdy  independence  regained 
the  esteem  of  that  mobile  body ;  and  his  funeral,  on 
the  eve  of  the  Napoleonic  collapse,  became  a  popular 
liberal  demonstration. 

Sainte-Beuve  has  described  his  "Critiques  et  por- 
traits," essays  written  before  1848,  by  the  words  "Youth 
painted  youth."  He  felt  that  he  had  been  too  superla- 
tively generous  in  his  appreciation,  especially  of  Hugo 
and  his  fellow  Eomanticists.  Still,  this  earlier  work 
had  shown  a  constant  progress  in  estimating  contem- 
poraries,1 though  some  have  thought  that  jealousy 
warped  his  judgments  of  the  greatest  writers  of  his  own 
time,  and  it  is  certainly  in  his  criticism  of  former  gener- 
ations' that  he  is  most  sober  and  suggestive.  But  the 
great  critic  in  him  dates  from  1849  and  the  "  Causeries." 

His  popularity,  his  influence,  and  so  his  importance 
depended  much  on  the  novelty  of  his  method.  For  the 

1  Matthew  Arnold  suggests  the  comparison  of  his  undiscriminating 
praise  of  Hugo  in  1831  with  the  keen  dissection  of  1835,  where  Hugo 
has  become :  "  The  Frank,  energetic  and  subtle,  who  has  mastered  to 
perfection  the  technical  and  rhetorical  resources  of  the  Latin  literature 
of  the  decadence." 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF  HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      277 

dry-as-dust,  mineral-cabinet  process  of  Nisard,  he  sub- 
stituted the  "literary  chat,"  the  causerie  critique,  in 
which  he  might  gather  all  the  facts  and  anecdotes, 
however  trivial,  that  would  throw  light  on  the  author 
and  his  environment,  and  so  explain  the  work  that  had 
grown  from  one  as  well  as  the  other.  Then,  too,  he 
looked  always  rather  at  merits  than  failures,  at  what  a 
man  was  than  at  what  he  was  not.  A  subjective  critic 
naturally  praises  what  pleases  him.  He  is  naturally 
tolerant  of  rising  talent  and  of  eccentric  natures.  He 
welcomes  novelty  just  as  the  objective  critic  dreads  it. 
The  unclassified  attracts  the  one ;  it  repels  the  other. 
"  What  I  sought  in  criticism,"  said  Sainte-Beuve,  "  was 
to  put  in  it  a  sort  of  charm,  and  at  the  same  time  more 
reality."  He  succeeded  in  both  endeavors.  He  made 
criticism  the  most  popular  of  the  serious  forms  of  liter- 
ature, and  he  rescued  it  from  its  old  intolerant  artifi- 
ciality forever. 

Sainte-Beuve  called  himself  a  disciple  of  Bacon,  by 
which  he  may  have  meant  that  books  seemed  to  him 
inseparable  from  the  men  that  wrote  them,  and  equally 
dependent  on  moral  and  psychological  conditions. 
Hence  arose  for  him  the  necessity  of  a  scientific  study 
of  character.  He  would  aspire  to  do  for  man  what 
Jussieu  had  done  for  plants  and  Cuvier  for  animals. 
Nothing  human  can  be  foreign  to  this  collector  of  tal- 
ents. He  passes  with  easy  flight  from  the  gay  to  the 
demure,  from  the  philosopher  to  the  jester.  Every- 
where he  finds  the  best  and  makes  it  his  own.  "  He  is 
the  very  personification  of  criticism  considered  as  a 
science  of  sagacious  analysis  and  at  the  same  time  as 
the  most  delicate  of  the  arts." l 

1  Pellissier,  Mouvement  littcraire,  p.  131,  to  whom  I  am  indebted 
for  other  suggestions  in  this  and  the  preceding  paragraph. 


278  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Sainte-Beuve  more  than  once  calls  his  work  "  natural 
history,"  and  himself  "  a  naturalist  of  the  mind."  The 
use  of  these  words  may  be  fortuitous ;  but  such  terms, 
with  "  physiology,"  "  surgery,"  and  the  like,  mark  the 
feeling  that  criticism  had  in  it  the  possibilities  of  an 
exact  science.  Indeed  he  hoped  that  there  would 
eventually  be  found  in  it  something  of  the  luminous 
life  and  order  that  presides  over  the  distribution  of 
botanical  and  zoological  families.  But  to  this  critical 
science,  of  which  he  had  a  prophetic  vision,  he  never 
himself  attained,  nor  indeed  seriously  attempted  it. 
He  remained  to  the  last  essentially  subjective.  "  Almost 
all  a  critic  needs,"  he  thinks,  "  is  to  know  how  to  read 
a  book,  judging  it  as  he  reads,  and  never  ceasing  to  en- 
joy," making  his  criticism,  as  he  says  in  another  place, 
"an  emanation  of  books."  But  his  idea  of  a  science  of 
criticism  was  soon  to  be  developed  with  brilliant  genius 
and  rigid  logic  by  Hippolyte  Adolphe  Taine. 

Taine,1  the  theorist  of  Naturalism,  was  born  just  as 
the  Romantic  School  was  winning  its  first  victories. 
Like  his  great  contemporary  Renan,  he  lost  his  father 
in  early  youth,  and  owed  to  the  quiet  home  training  of 

1  Born  1828  ;  died  1892.  His  principal  volumes  are  :  Essai  sur  La 
Fontaine,  1853  (revised  1860) ;  Essai  sur  Tite-Live,  1854 ;  Philosophes 
franyais  du  xix.  siecle,  1856;  Essais  de  critique  et  d'histoire,  1857; 
Histoire  de  la  litterature  anglaise,  1864;  Nouveaux  essais,  1865;  Phi- 
losophic d'art  en  Italie,  1866 ;  Notes  sur  Paris  (Thomas  Graindorge), 
1867;  L'Ideal  dans  1'art,  1867;  Philosophie  d'art  dans  les  Pays-Bas, 
1868;  De  1'intelligence,  1870;  Notes  sur  1'Angleterre,  1872;  Origines 
de  la  France  contemporaine  (Ancien  regime,  1876,  Resolution,  1878- 
1884,  Re'gime  moderne,  1890,  unfinished). 

Critical  essays  on  Taine  may  be  found  in  Bourget,  Essais  de  psy- 
chologic contemporaine,  175;  Lemaitre,  Les  Contemporaius,  iv.  169; 
Contemporary  Review,  April,  1893  (Gabriel  Monod).  Lanson,  Litte'ra- 
ture  franyaise,  p.  1019,  and  Pellissier,  Mouvement  litteraire,  p.  307,  are 
both  helpful  though  summary  judgments. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF  HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      279 

his  mother  a  devotion  to  study  and  truth  for  its  own 
sake  that  never  deserted  him  through  life.  He  had 
intended  to  fit  himself  for  a  professorship,  but  even  as 
a  student  at  the  Ecole  Norinale  he  showed  himself  a 
thinker  so  independent  and  restive  under  its  philosophic 
eclecticism  that  his  examiners,  regarding  such  talent  as 
dangerous,  tried  to  stifle  it  by  a  provincial  appointment, 
which  he  promptly  resigned.  He  seized  the  unfore- 
seen leisure  to  supplement  his  philosophy  by  studies 
in  medicine  and  natural  science,  and  thus  brought  him- 
self more  in  touch  with  the  spirit  of  the  rising  genera- 
tion. Hence  it  was  that  his  early  essays  on  La  Fontaine, 
Livy,  and  the  French  Philosophers  won  immediate  pop- 
ularity, while  his  little  account  of  a  "  Journey  through 
the  Pyrenees"  (1855)  showed  his  mastery  of  ordered 
and  minute  observation.  It  marked  a  scientific  mind, 
and  won  him  at  the  same  time  recognition  in  the  re- 
public of  letters. 

In  1864  the  government  that  had  thought  him  dan- 
gerous ten  years  before,  made  him  professor  in  the 
Ecole  des  Beaux  Arts,  a  position  to  which  we  owe 
several  series  of  lectures  on  the  history  of  art  that  are 
models  of  philosophic  criticism.  In  the  same  year  he 
published  his  monumental  "  History  of  English  Litera- 
ture," applying  the  same  principles  in  another  field. 
But  from  his  studies  of  literature  and  art  he  was 
diverted,  by  the  collapse  of  the  Empire  and  the  disasters 
of  his  country  in  the  "  Terrible  Year,"  to  the  philoso- 
phy of  history ;  for  he  thought  he  saw  in  the  sins  and 
shortcomings  of  the  old  regime,  in  the  Jacobins  and 
in  Bonaparte,  the  sufficient  cause  of  all  the  woes  of 
his  native  land.  To  show  this  in  detail  was  the  aim 
of  the  rest  of  his  life  and  of  the  "  Sources  of  Contem- 
porary France,"  a  work  of  immense  erudition,  bris- 


280  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

tling  with  quotations,  yet  so  systematized  as  to  be 
almost  mechanical  in  the  logic  of  its  development. 
He  condemned  the  ancien  regime  as  the  true  ancestor 
of  Jacobinism,  for  the  monarchy  had  so  fostered  its 
own  supplanter  and  executioner  that  "  one  may  regard 
its  history  as  a  long  suicide."  But  he  found  the  worst 
faults  of  the  royalists  repeated  by  the  republicans,  and 
reserved  the  bitterest  vial  of  his  wrath  for  the  Corsican 
condottiere  Bonaparte.  Thus  he  alienated,  by  turns, 
the  monarchists,  the  republicans,  and  the  imperial- 
ists, while  remaining  through  all  the  twenty  years  of 
this  arduous  study  entirely  consistent  with  the  prin- 
ciples that  had  guided  his  whole  scholarly  life  in 
history,  philosophy,  aesthetics,  and  literature ;  alike 
unmoved  by  popular  clamor  and  indifferent  to  popular 
success. 

These  principles  that  underlie  his  whole  work  have 
exercised  more  influence  on  literature  than  his  direct 
teaching  has  done.  It  is  to  those  therefore,  rather 
than  to  this,  that  one  should  first  direct  attention,  for 
they  are  the  philosophical  basis  of  the  pessimistic 
poetry  and  Naturalistic  fiction  that  form  so  large  a 
part  of  the  literature  of  this  half-century.1 

If  one  attempts  to  realize  the  intellectual  condition 
of  France  when  Taine  was  graduated  from  the  Ecole 
Normale  in  1853,  its  chief  characteristic  will  appear 
to  be  a  profound  disillusionment.  The  Romantic  move- 
ment was  bankrupt,  Ponsard's  pseudo-classicism  seemed 
a  forlorn  hope,  Musset  was  drinking  himself  to  death, 
De  Vigny  had  withdrawn  from  letters  into  what  Sainte- 
Beuve  called  his  "tower  of  ivory,"  Lamartine  and 

1  In  what  follows  I  have  been  guided  in  the  main  by  the  arrange- 
ment of  Pellissier,  though  I  am  indebted  in  some  measure  to  all  the 
authors  cited  in  the  preceding  note. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      281 

Gautier  had  turned  perforce  to  prose,  Hugo  was  in 
exile.  The  first  dramatic  successes  of  Dumas  fits  and 
Labiche  were  swallows  that  announced  but  did  not 
make  the  Naturalistic  summer,1  and  the  novel  was 
to  remain  for  some  years  still  where  Balzac  had  left 
it  on  his  death  in  1850.  In  politics,  too,  reaction 
weighed  on  France.  The  coup  d'etat  of  1851  had 
muzzled  the  press  and  the  tribune,  and  would  have 
been  quite  ready  to  muzzle  the  pulpit  also,  had  it 
shown  any  quiver  of  independent  life.  Under  these 
conditions  the  thought  of  France  looked  for  its  eman- 
cipation to  the  scientific  spirit  that  made  itself  felt 
almost  simultaneously  in  all  branches  of  intellectual 
activity,  in  the  high  art  of  Meissonier  and  the  low  art 
of  Forain,  in  the  dramas  of  Dumas  and  Augier,  in  the 
poetry  of  the  Parnassians,  in  the  historical  investiga- 
tions of  the  philologist  Ren  an,  and  presently  in  the 
novels  of  Flaubert  and  the  Goncourt  brothers.  All 
these  were  equally  penetrated  with  the  analytic,  meticu- 
lous spirit  that  found  its  chief  nourishment  in  "  sug- 
gestive little  facts,"  that  regarded  the  eclecticism  of 
Cousin  as  outworn  and  the  positivism  of  Comte  as 
unreasonably  positive,  while  they  found  their  clearest 
and  most  uncompromising  exponent  in  the  author  of 
the  Essay  on  La  Fontaine,  the  young  graduate  of  the 
Ecole  Normale. 

Science  and  poetry  were  not  the  same  thing  to 
them,  but  they  felt  that  in  the  depths  of  the  mind 
they  would  be  found  to  have  the  same  roots,  that  there 
was  something  common  between  them.2  Hence  they 

1  Labiche,  Le  Chapeau  de  paille  d'ltalie,  1851  ;   Dumas  fits,  La 
Dame  aux  camelias,  1852. 

2  This  is  essentially   the  thought  of  Brunetiere,   Poesie  lyrique, 
ii.  178. 


282  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

conceived  it  to  be  one  of  the  functions  of  art,  if  not  its 
pre-eminent  function  and  proper  end,  to  manifest  by  its 
own  peculiar  means  this  primitive  relation  and  these 
secret  affinities.  Herein  lies  the  raison  d'etre  of 
literary  Naturalism,  of  which  the  fruitful  truth  will 
survive  the  vagaries  of  the  doctrinaire  novelists  and 
critics,  who  had,  perhaps,  least  share  of  its  spirit  or 
comprehension  of  its  nature. 

No  generation  ever  took  more  hopefully  to  heart 
that  lofty  promise,  "  The  truth  shall  make  you  free ; " 
but  by  "truth"  they  meant  a  minute  study  of  phe- 
nomena. "  The  whole  world,"  says  Bourget,  "  seemed 
to  Taine  material  for  intellectual  exploitation,"  or,  as 
he  puts  it  himself,  "little  facts,  well  chosen,  impor- 
tant, significant,  amply  substantiated,  minutely  noted, 
such  is,  to-day,  the  material  of  every  science,"  —  of  psy- 
chology, in  his  view,  quite  as  much  as  of  chemistry. 
Hence  his  persistent  attempt  to  make  of  psychology 
an  exact  science  by  introducing  a  determining  element 
from  physiology ;  hence,  too,  the  ancillary  disciplines 
of  aesthetics  and  literary  criticism  are  treated  by  him 
as  exact  sciences,  capable  of  rigorous  analysis  and  sys- 
tematic deduction.  Where  Sainte-Beuve  had  sought 
to  show  how  environment  had  influenced  literature, 
Taine  undertook  to  prove  that  it  had  caused  it.  His 
dogmatic  assurance  needed  only  to  be  reinforced  by  his 
vast  reading,  as  in  the  "History  of  English  Literature," 
to  find  its  response  in  the  educated  thought  of  the 
younger  generation  in  imperial  France;  and  he  pres- 
ently found  in  the  novelists  a  most  zealous  body  of 
unsought  allies  in  his  psychological  researches  into 
what  Zola  has  called  "human  documents."  It  is  to 
his  teaching,  in  the  opinion  of  Bourget,  that  the  minute 
observation  of  the  modern  artist  is  largely  due.  It  is 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      283 

to  his  impulse  that  we  owe  the  multitude  of  "little 
note-books,"  the  daily  resort  of  Daudet  and  Zola  in 
their  effort  to  realize  Taine's  expectation  that  "the 
great  dramatists  and  romancers  should  do  for  the 
present  what  historians  do  for  the  past." 

But  his  system  explains  more  in  their  work  than 
the  method  of  its  composition.  Any  psychologist  who 
depends  on  observation  will  almost  of  necessity  seek 
the  abnormal,  the  extreme  manifestations  of  mind  and 
character,  for  these  are  to  him  what  the  microscope  is 
to  the  botanist ;  they  show  the  laws  of  thought  mag- 
nified, distorted  perhaps,  but  more  useful  to  his  pur- 
pose ;  and  so  the  typical  naturalistic  and  psychological 
novelists  are  only  following  Taine  when  they  deal  by 
preference  with  the  monstrosities  or  the  exceptions, 
with  moral  or  nervous  disease,  with  the  Germinie  Lacer- 
taux,  the  Lan tiers,  Claude  and  Etienne,  the  Larchers, 
and  the  Sidonies  of  society,1  to  whom  their  art  can 
give  a  high  relief  without  the  infinite  labor  that 
Flaubert  required  to  make  an  equal  impression  with 
his  Monsieur  Homais  or  his  Charles  Bovary.2 

Still  another  result  of  this  new  experimental  psy- 
chology is  a  shifting  of  moral  standards.  To  a  deter- 
minist  like  Taine,  "there  are  causes  for  ambition, 
courage,  veracity,  as  for  digestion,  muscular  movement, 
and  animal  heat.  Vice  and  virtue  are  products  like 
vitriol  and  sugar;"  and  beneath  the  most  cultured 
representative  of  Parisian  society,  if  we  unwrap  his 
nature  from  the  mummy-cloths  of  social  and  inherited 
restraint,  we  shall  find  everywhere  and  always  "the 

1  Characters  in  E.  and  J.  de  Goncourt,  Germinie  Lacertaux ;  Zola, 
L'CEuvre,  and  L'Assommoir ;  Bourget,  Mensonges  and  Psychologic  de 
1'amour  moderne ;  Daudet,  Fromont  jeune  et  Risler  aine. 

2  Both  characters  in  Flaubert,  Madame  Bovary. 


284  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

ferocious  and  lustful  gorilla."  But  life  and  history 
when  looked  at  from  this  determinist  position  tend 
inevitably  to  pessimistic  submission  to  nature,  and 
pessimistic  Taine  was  to  the  core.  Health,  even  rea- 
son itself,  seems  to  him  only  "a  happy  accident,"  and 
he  concludes  that  "  the  best  fruit  of  science  is  cold 
resignation,  for  it  pacifies  and  prepares  the  soul,  so 
that  our  suffering  is  reduced  to  bodily  pain."  Most 
striking,  too,  is  a  passage  on  the  Florentine  Niobe, 
whom  the  sculptor  has  presented  as  her  sons  are  fall- 
ing beneath  the  celestial  arrows  of  Apollo.  "  Cold  and 
still  she  stands ;  hopeless,  with  eyes  fixed  on  heaven, 
she  contemplates  with  awe-struck  horror  the  dazzling 
and  deadly  nimbus,  the  extended  arms,  the  inevitable 
shafts,  and  the  implacable  serenity  of  the  god."  This 
is  the  mind  that  will  exclaim  as  it  looks  down  the 
vistas  of  time,  "  What  a  cemetery  is  history ! " 

Now  let  him  apply  these  doctrines  to  literature  and 
art.  These,  as  he  says  in  his  "Philosophy  of  Art," 
manifest  natural  causes  and  fundamental  laws  in  con- 
crete terms  of  sense,  addressing  themselves  not  merely 
to  reason,  as  science  does  by  its  deduction  of  exact 
formulae  and  abstract  terms,  but  to  the  hearts  and 
senses  of  men.  Thus  they  are  at  once  more  lofty 
and  more  popular ;  for  they  manifest  what  is  highest, 
and  manifest  it  to  all.  So  all  literary  phenomena 
must  be  products,  inevitable  products ;  and  their  factors 
are  race,  historical  and  physical  environment  and  mo- 
mentum, or  the  tendency  to  perpetuation  and  evolu- 
tion in  already  existing  conditions.  The  whole  of  the 
elaborate  "History  of  English  Literature,"  from  the 
harpers  of  "Beowulf"  to  the  last  "idle  singer  of  an 
empty  day,"  is  intended  as  an  illustration  and  proof 
of  this  theory.  By  it,  too,  he  seeks  to  explain  La 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY  AND   CRITICISM.      285 

Fontaine  and  Eacine,  eliminating,  surely  beyond  what 
present  psychological  accuracy  of  analysis  will  justify, 
that  play  of  individual  genius  which  has  been  called 
by  Lanson  "  the  inexplicable  residuum."  To  Taine 
the  poem  is  as  much  a  product  as  the  honeycomb, 
and  he  treats  it  like  a  naturalist.  To  use  a  happy 
figure  of  Pellissier  (p.  307),  he  does  not  urge  us  to 
follow  the  example  of  the  bee,  or  even  to  admire  its 
skill;  but  he  catches  one,  examines  it,  dissects  it, 
scrutinizes  the  internal  arrangement  of  the  organs  so 
as  to  fix  its  class,  and  then  investigates  by  what 
method  it  gathers,  elaborates,  and  changes  pollen  into 
honey.  And  so  he  and  his  school  come  to  attach  the 
greatest  importance  to  form  and  to  those  laws  of 
aesthetics  that  foster  a  purely  impersonal  objectivity. 
For,  indeed,  it  is  clear  that  Naturalism  in  literature 
is  the  logical  and  inevitable  concomitant  of  the  deter- 
minist  philosophy,  as  Taine's  study  of  Balzac  seems  to 
have  convinced  even  Sainte-Beuve. 

His  method  will  be  the  same  with  the  art  of  Greece 
and  the  Italian  Kenaissance  as  with  the  genre  painters 
of  the  Dutch  School.  But  here,  as  in  literature,  while 
he  accounts  admirably  for  the  general  characteristics 
of  a  nation  or  a  period,  he  does  not  lay  sufficient  weight 
on  the  individuality  of  genius,  —  on  what  separates 
a  Eacine  from  a  Pradon,  a  Eembrandt  from  a  Breughl. 
And  just  as  in  psychology  he  was  attracted  by  the 
exceptional  and  the  extreme,  because  they  promised 
a  richer  harvest  of  "  significant  little  facts,"  so  in 
literature  and  in  art  he  is  attracted  by  artists  and 
authors  who  push  one  quality  to  its  extreme  rather 
than  by  those  who  show  a  rounded  perfection.  It  is 
not  with  him  a  question  of  the  good,  or  even  primarily 
of  the  beautiful,  in  statue  or  poem ;  a  wasp  is  as 


286  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

interesting  to  the  naturalist  as  the  busiest  of  bees.  To 
Taine  the  value  of  a  work  of  art  or  of  literature  is  in 
what  it  teaches,  in  the  number  of  "  essential,  signifi- 
cant little  facts  "  in  regard  to  its  object  that  it  repro- 
duces or  reveals.  This  will  be  his  primary  classification. 
Secondarily,  he  will  rank  works  of  art  or  literature, 
according  to  their  beneficence ;  that  is,  according  to  the 
result  for  mental  health  and  pleasure  on  the  specta- 
tor or  reader.  He  puts  last  and  in  a  wholly  subordi- 
nate place  what  Gautier  would  have  put  first,  —  art  for 
art's  sake,  the  skill  of  the  author  in  doing  what  he 
tries  to  do. 

Taine's  style  is  like  the  man  and  like  his  philosophy, 
grave,  sincere,  simple,  and  with  rare  exceptions  serene. 
There  is  hardly  a  trace  of  irony,  of  straining  for  effect, 
or  of  deep  enthusiasm,  and  there  seems  none  at  all  of 
sentimentality  or  of  mysticism.  The  man's  character, 
and  his  work  also,  was  essentially  logical,  almost 
mechanical,  and  in  its  finer  moments  architectural  in 
its  methodical  upbuilding  from  phrase  through  para- 
graph and  chapter  to  a  unified  structure  in  which  each 
single  stone  has  its  designated  place  and  function. 
He  eschews  the  ornaments  and  freedom  of  a  discur- 
sive style,  allows  himself  few  and  brief  digressions, 
relegating  to  the  unessential  what  does  not  fit  on  the 
procrustean  bed  of  his  system.  Add  to  this  that  his 
philosophy  led  him  to  deal  almost  wholly  with  the 
realities  of  sense,  "  the  little  facts,"  the  grouping  of 
which  in  ordered  masses  was  one  of  the  greatest  tri- 
umphs of  his  genius.  As  one  reads,  one  is  drawn  into 
a  state  of  mind  where  each  petty  event  seems  the  de- 
termining cause  of  others,  where  each  group  is  linked 
to  others,  where  each  is  effect  and  each  is  cause,  while 
all  contribute  to  the  sign  or  idea  that  forms  a  part  of 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      287 

personality ;  where  thought  and  the  ego  itself  become 
but  forms  of  molecular  motion,  induced  by  repeated 
sensations. 

To  the  demonstration  of  such  a  philosophy  this  style 
is  admirably  adapted.  All  in  it  is  development,  all  is 
swayed  by  determinism.  There  is  nothing  to  startle, 
no  sudden  turns,  no  unexpected  mental  or  moral  shock  ; 
for  though  he  will  seek  the  solution  of  everything  he 
will  pass  a  moral  judgment  on  nothing.  Indeed  he 
will  guard  himself  as  far  as  may  be  from  "  proscrib- 
ing "  or  "  pardoning  "  at  all,  although  he  thus  eludes 
the  end  and  purpose  of  true  criticism,  the  definition 
of  relative  beauty  by  classification. 

His  is  not  the  temper  nor  the  style  of  a  prophet, 
nor  of  a  preacher,  but  of  an  expounder,  a  demonstrator, 
bent  only  on  giving  to  each  scene  its  true  color  and 
perspective,  on  placing  each  event  or  statue  or  book 
or  picture  in  its  exact  relations  of  race,  environment, 
and  continuity  of  development.  Oratorical  he  is,  but 
it  is  the  oratory  of  the  bar,  not  of  the  pulpit;  or, 
as  Mr.  Monod  puts  it,  "his  imagination  is  but  the 
sumptuous  raiment  of  his  dialectic." 

The  fault  of  Taine's  system,  as  has  been  already 
suggested,  is  that  it  rigidly  and  intentionally  ex- 
cludes a  certain  psychic  element,  "the  inexpressible 
monad  "  of  individuality,  that  many  of  his  readers  feel 
to  be  as  real  as  any  of  his  "  little  facts."  So  in  literary 
criticism,  which  more  immediately  concerns  us,  while 
he  begins  with  Sainte-Beuve  he  is  apt  to  end  with 
Nisard.  He  will  seek,  just  as  Sainte-Beuve  would 
have  done,  the  explanation  of  literary  phenomena  in 
environment,  but  he  will  order  the  facts  so  won  after 
a  preconceived  system,  where  Sainte-Beuve  would  have 
judged  them  independently. 


288  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

It  was  this  logic,  at  once  relentless  and  inadequate, 
that  repelled  the  delicately  tuned  soul  of  Amiel.  The 
reading  of  Taine,  he  said,  "  dried,  corroded,  saddened 
him."  It  had  to  him  "  the  smell  of  the  laboratory ; " 
it  never  inspired,  but  only  informed,  and  gave  "  algebra 
to  those  who  asked  life,  the  formula  for  the  image, 
the  heady  fumes  of  distillation  for  the  divine  intoxica- 
tion of  Apollo."  And  yet  this  very  rigidity  has  had 
a  charm  to  many  minds  in  all  times,  but  especially  in 
times  like  his,  when  the  world-spirit,  the  Zeitgeist,  re- 
turns to  rest  on  solid  ground  after  excursions  in  the 
realms  of  romantic  imagination.  Such  alternations 
recur  at  shortening  intervals  in  every  nation's  mental 
life.  Taine  was  at  the  turn  of  the  Naturalistic  tide.  It 
was  the  opportuneness  of  his  system  more  than  its  depth 
that  made  him  the  guiding  light  to  the  intellectually 
productive  men  of  France  almost  until  his  death.  But 
the  last  decade  of  the  century  was  not  far  advanced 
before  signs  multiplied  of  restlessness  at  the  narrow  and 
sober  horizon  of  naturalism  and  determinism  and  French 
critics  and  writers  were  showing  a  disposition  to  follow 
rather  the  disciples  of  the  studiously  unsystematic 
skepticism  of  Eenan. 

A  greater  contrast  in  birth,  training,  disposition,  en- 
vironment, and  moral  or  literary  influence  can  hardly 
be  imagined  than  that  which  separates  Hippolyte 
Taine  from  Ernest  Eenan,  who  in  these  latter  days 
seems  to  have  been  more  and  more  the  chosen  leader 
of  French  thought,  or  at  least  of  its  literary  and  criti- 
cal expression,  though  perhaps  it  is  inaccurate  to  apply 
the  name  "  leader  "  to  such  a  guide. 

He  was  born 1   in  the  once  monastic  and  modern 

1  Born  1823  ;  died  1892.  Averroes  et  Averro'isme,  1852.  Collected 
essays:  Etudes  d'histoire  religieuse,  1857;  Essais  de  morale  et  de 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      289 

fishing-village  of  Treguier  in  Brittany,  of  Celtic  stock 
that  it  has  pleased  some  to  connect  with  Saint  Konan 
of  greater  Britain.  He  lost  his  father  in  early  youth, 
and  owed  it  to  the  devotion  of  his  sister  that  he  was 
enabled  to  begin  at  the  school  of  the  local  priests  the 
studies  for  which  his  delicate  health  seemed  to  desig- 
nate him.  His  brilliant  progress  made  him  a  marked 
boy.  He  was  invited  by  Dupanloup,  the  future  arch- 
bishop, to  his  seminary  in  Paris,  whence  he  was  ad- 
vanced to  Saint-Sulpice,  the  chief  training-school  of 
the  French  priesthood,  for  which  his  masters  reported 
"he  was  trying  to  have  a  vocation."  But  here  his 
critical  studies  of  the  Scripture  texts  and  works  of 
German  philosophy,  surreptitiously  furnished  by  his 
sister,  gradually  weakened  his  intellectual  hold  on  the 
Catholic  faith,  though  not  his  love  for  its  beauty  nor 
his  warm  regard  for  its  worthy  professors.  At  twenty- 
two  he  determined  to  abandon  his  study  for  orders, 
and  his  old  patron  Dupanloup  magnanimously  pro- 
cured for  him  a  Latin  mastership  in  a  clerical  school. 

critique,  1859;  Questions  contemporaines,  1868;  Melanges  d'histoire 
et  de  voyages,  1878  ;  Nouvelles  etudes,  1884;  Discours  et  conferences, 
1887  ;  L'Avenir  de  la  science,  1890  (written  in  1848).  Church  history : 
Vie  de  Jesus%1863;  Saint  Paul  et  sa  mission,  1867;  L'Ante-Christ, 
1873;  Les  Evangelistes,  1877;  L'Eglise  chretienne,  1879;  Marc- 
Aurele,  1881,  to  which  was  added  a  TaUe  generale,  1883,  and  later 
the  introductory  study  :  Histoire  du  Peuple  Israel,  1888-1894  (5  vols  ). 
Dramas :  Caliban,  L'Eau  de  Jouvence,  Le  Pretre  de  Nemi,  Dialogue 
des  morts,  L'Abbesse  de  Jouarre,  Le  Jour  de  1'au,  first  collected  as 
"  Drames  philosophiques  "  in  1888. 

Criticism :  Pellissier,  1.  c.  p.  314 ;  Lanson,  1.  c.  p.  1069 ;  Bourget, 
Essais  de  psychologie  contemporaine,  p.  35 ;  Seailles,  Ernest  Renan. 
Nineteenth  Century,  June  and  July,  1881  (Myers) ;  Contemporary 
Review,  August,  1883  (Davies)  ;  Westminster  Review,  October,  1891 
(Gleadell)  ;  Fortnightly  Review,  November,  1892;  Contemporary 
Review,  November,  1892  (Monod) ;  Revue  bleue,  October,  1893 
(Darmesteter).  See  also  Lemaitre,  Contemporains,  i.  193,  iv.  245; 
France,  La  Vie  litteraire,  i.  422,  ii.  317. 

19 


290  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

We  know  of  these  early  years  chiefly  from  his 
charming  "Souvenirs"  (1890)  and  their  sequel,  "Les 
Feuilles  de'tache'es  "  (1892).  He  was  relieved  by  his 
sister's  savings  from  pressing  want,  and  his  scholar- 
ship soon  gave  him  an  assured  position.  He  was  but 
twenty-five  when  he  won  his  doctorate  with  high  dis- 
tinction ;  and  already  the  Academy  of  Inscriptions  had 
awarded  him  a  prize  for  his  "  General  History  and 
Comparative  Systems  of  the  Semitic  Languages."  An- 
other prize  for  an  essay  on  the  "  Study  of  Greek  in 
the  Middle  Ages  "  followed,  in  1850.  He  was  sent  by 
the  Academy  to  Italy,  and  published  as  the  fruit  of 
his  studies  there  an  epoch-making  work  on  Arab  phi- 
losophy. Again,  in  1860,  he  was  sent  to  Syria  on  an 
archaeological  mission,  whence  he  returned  with  the 
conception  of  his  "  Life  of  Christ"  (1863).  Soon  after 
he  was  elected  to  the  chair  of  Hebrew  in  the  College 
de  France  ;  but  though  this  institution,  by  its  founda- 
tion and  its  traditions,  is  independent  of  dogmatic 
influences,  some  expressions  savoring  of  Unitarianism  in 
his  inaugural  address,  supplemented  by  the  sensation 
caused  by  the  "  Vie  de  Je'sus,"  excluded  him  from  pro- 
fessorial functions  during  the  Second  Empire,  a  loss 
that  was  much  more  than  counterbalanced  by  the 
wide  circulation  that  the  resulting  popularity  gave  to 
his  ideas.  He  had  already  printed  noteworthy  articles 
in  the  scholarly  reviews,  full  of  the  enthusiastic  con- 
viction that  politics,  education,  and  ethics  itself  would 
be  regenerated  by  the  progress  of  science,  and  more 
especially  by  that  of  his  own  favorites,  history  and 
philology  ;  but  it  was  from  the  time  of  his  suspended 
professorship  and  the  "  Life  of  Christ "  that  he  began 
to  exercise  an  influence  beyond  the  circle  of  the 
learned.  Of  the  "Vie  de  Je'sus,"  whose  captivating 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.       291 

beauty  disguised  a  most  powerful  ethical  solvent,  more 
than  300,000  copies  have  been -sold  in  France  alone, 
and  for  every  work  that  has  followed  there  has  been 
a  popular  as  well  as  a  professional  demand,  though  it 
does  not  appear  that  Eenan  ever  sacrificed  anything 
that  he  held  essential  to  a  desire  for  fame. 

The  "Life  of  Jesus  "  was  only  the  first  of  seven  vol- 
umes dealing  with  the  origins  of  Christianity  during 
the  period  extending  from  the  birth  of  Christ  to  the 
death  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  to  which  he  afterward 
added  an  introductory  "  History  of  the  Jews,"  his  last 
important  work.  But  this  vast  task  by  no  means  ab- 
sorbed his  philosophic  interest.  Besides  important 
contributions  to  the  huge  "  Literary  History  of  France," 
begun  by  the  Benedictines  of  a  former  century,  he  wrote 
a  considerable  number  of  Oriental  studies  and  trans- 
lations, and  several  curious  "  Philosophic  Dramas " 
that  contain  the  most  daring  of  his  speculations.  The 
dispassionate  calm  of  his  mind  was  well  illustrated  at 
the  time  of  the  German  war  in  two  letters  to  David 
Strauss,  the  radical  Biblical  critic  of  Tubingen.  In 
the  first,  he  magnanimously  recognizes  his  debt  to 
German  culture  at  a  moment  when  France  was  feeling 
the  weight  of  her  conquering  arms ;  in  the  second 
he  vindicates  for  the  conquered  the  superiority  of 
French  esprit.  And  later,  also,  his  speech  at  his 
reception  to  the  Academy  (1879),  and  the  "  Letter  to 
a  Friend  in  Germany"  that  the  discussion  over  it 
evoked,  were  remarkably  free  from  any  taint  of  chau- 
vinism. During  his  last  years  he  enjoyed  all  the 
honors,  public  and  private,  that  Paris  could  bestow  on 
her  favorite  scholar.  He  was  made  Grand  Officer  of 
the  Legion  of  Honor  and  Administrator  of  the  College 
de  France,  where  he  died,  as  he  had  wished,  at  his 


292  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

post,  October  2,  1892.  This  characteristic  saying  is 
recorded  among  his  last  words :  "  Let  us  submit  to 
those  natural  laws  of  which  we  are  one  of  the  mani- 
festations. Heaven  and  earth  remain,"  —  a  sentiment 
that  accords  curiously  with  that  recorded  of  the  aged 
Goethe.1 

Into  the  religious  and  philological  controversies  that 
raged  around  Eenan's  writings,  and  especially  around 
his  "  Christian  Origins,"  controversies  whose  volume  is 
rivalled  only  by  their  acrimony,  it  is  happily  not  our 
task  to  enter ;  but  it  is  necessary  to  define,  so  far  as  it 
does  not  elude  definition,  what  Kenanism  is,  and  what 
its  effect  has  been  on  recent  French  literature. 

Both  Renan  and  Taine  were  deterininists,  and  both 
were  full  of  the  scientific  spirit.  But  what  in  the  lat- 
ter bred  a  mathematical  dogmatism  inspired  in  the  other 
a  cautious,  indefinite,  mystical,  idealistic,  ironical  skep- 
ticism, with  which  there  was  a  curious  intermingling 
of  romantic  sentiment  that  fostered  a  joyous  optimism, 
in  strange  contrast  to  Taine's  gloom.2 

Eenan  was,  or  at  least  took  pains  to  seem,  a  smiling 
philosopher.  He  saw  so  many  sides  of  truth,  so  many 
of  its  antinomies,  that  he  was  never  quite  sure  of  any 
definition,  but  he  was  sure  of  his  own  wit  and  genius, 
and  was  "  the  first  to  delight  in  Renanism." 3  "  The 
world,"  he  said,  borrowing  a  simile  from  Heinrich 
Heine,  "is  a  spectacle  that  God  gives  himself.  Let  us 
serve  the  aim  of  the  grand  stage-manager  by  contriving 
to  make  the  spectacle  as  brilliant  and  varied  as  possi- 
ble." In  the  same  spirit  he  speaks  of  life  as  "  a  charm- 

1  Eckermann's  Conversations,  part  iii.,  Oct.  8,  1827. 

2  Challemel  Lacour  said  of  him  :  "  He  thinks  like  a  man,  feels  like 
a  woman,  and  acts  like   a  child,"  an  epigram  cited  by  nearly  every 
writer  on  Kenan.     Si  non  e  vero  e  ben  trovato. 

3  Lemaitre,  Contemporains,  i.  211. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF  HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      293 

ing  promenade,"  and  thinks  the  nineteenth  century 
"  the  most  amusing  of  ages  "  to  one  who  like  him  re- 
gards it  "  with  benevolent  and  universal  irony."  His 
joy  is  the  intellectual  delight  of  a  favored  critic  who 
cares  less  for  the  play  itself  than  for  the  scope  that  it 
gives  to  the  display  of  his  own  genius.  "  One  should 
write,"  said  he,  "  only  of  what  one  loves,"  and  in  writ- 
ing of  religion  he  satisfied  at  once  his  critical  and  his 
mystical  nature. 

This  combination  leads  to  a  dilettante  spirit,  the  spirit 
that  asks,  "  What  is  truth  ?  and  will  not  stay  for  an 
answer."  Here  all  lofty  conception  of  moral  duty 
yields  to  the  enjoyment  of  a  beauty  that  seems  its  own 
excuse  for  being,  while  the  true  end  of  man  becomes 
"  to  rise  above  the  vulgarities  in  which  common  exist- 
ence grovels."  He  has  put  this  dilettante  attitude  very 
happily  when  he  says,  "  God  prefers  the  blasphemy  of 
great  minds  to  the  selfish  prayer  of  the  vulgar;  for 
though  the  blasphemy  may  imply  an  incomplete  view 
of  things,  it  contains  an  element  of  just  protest,  while 
egoism  contains  no  particle  of  truth."  And  if  one  asks 
why  God  should  be  pleased  with  a  protest  against  the 
order  of  his  world,  Eenan  will  answer,  as  he  did  to  the 
mourning  Breton  mother,  that  "  God  would  like  to  pre- 
vent such  things,  but  is  not  able  yet." 

Still,  it  might  be  hasty  to  call  Eenan  frivolous  or  a 
Pyrrhonist.  He  could  say  proudly  to  the  temptations 
of  the  Imperial  Minister  of  Education,  "  Thy  money 
perish  with  thee,"  and  he  asked  that  his  epitaph  might 
be  Veritatem  dilexi,  "  I  have  loved  truth."  He  was  in 
earnest  when  he  said  that  he  thought  he  was  the  only 
man  of  his  time  who  had  been  able  to  comprehend 
Francis  of  Assisi,  and  avowed  his  belief  that  "  religion 
is  a  product  of  the  normal  man,  so  that  he  who  is  most 


294  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

religious  and  most  assured  of  an  infinite  destiny  is  most 
true  to  his  nature."1  Again,  in  his  "Souvenirs,"  he 
says  :  "  I  feel  that  my  life  is  always  governed  by  a  faith 
I  no  longer  possess.  ...  It  still  lives  by  habit  and  sen- 
timent. One  continues  to  do  mechanically  what  one 
once  did  in  spirit  and  truth."  And  in  this  sense  he 
declares  that  "  few  persons  have  a  right  not  to  believe 
in  Christianity."  So  he  counselled  doubting  priests  to 
remain  in  the  church,  desired  that  children  be  brought 
up  in  it,  and  deplored  the  passing  away  of  popular  faith 
in  France.  He  ordered  his  outward  life  according  to 
Christian  standards,  and  found  serenity  and  consolation 
in  the  conviction  that  he  was  giving  "  electric  shocks 
to  people  who  would  rather  go  to  sleep,"  and  laying  the 
foundations  of  a  Christianity  purer  than  his  contempo- 
raries knew.2 

The  contradictions  that  puzzle  many  of  his  readers 
were  entirely  obvious  to  their  author.  He  regarded 
himself  as  by  nature  "  a  tissue  of  contradictions  .  .  . 
one  half  fated  to  be  employed  in  destroying  the 
other."  "I  do  not  complain,"  he  adds,  "  for  this  moral 
constitution  has  procured  me  the  keenest  intellectual 
pleasure  that  man  can  enjoy."  And  again  he  says : 
"I  am  by  nature  double,  one  part  of  me  laughs 
while  the  other  weeps.  ...  So  there  is  always  one 
part  happy."  Such  citations  could  be  multiplied 
indefinitely,  for  he  was  at  no  pains  to  avoid  this 
paradoxical  assertion  of  the  uncertainty  of  meta- 
physical and  ethical  speculation,  and  felt  humili- 
ated that  it  should  take  him  five  or  six  years  of 
the  study  of  Semitic  languages  and  German  criti- 

1  L'Avenir  religieux. 

2  See  the  prefaces  to  "  Etudes  d'histoire  religieuse  "  and  to  "  Essais 
de  morale  et  de  critique." 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      295 

cisin  "  to  reach  exactly  the  conclusion  of  the  street 
gamin  Gavroche."1 

The  key  to  these  contradictions  is  the  union  in 
Kenan  of  two  races,  the  Breton  and  the  Norman,  and 
of  two  trainings,  the  ecclesiastical  and  the  scientific, 
neither  of  which  overcomes  the  other,  while  each  by 
turns  possesses  his  mind.  Science  is  not  moral,  virtue 
is  not  scientific ;  but  morality  and  virtue,  the  spirit  of 
unselfishness  and  sacrifice,  are  a  part  of  his  idealism, 
another  aspect  of  truth  which  he  feels  as  essential 
to  right  living  as  any  knowledge  of  phenomena  with 
which  to  smaller  minds  it  might  seem  in  contradiction. 
No  religion,  according  to  him,  has  any  basis  in  science. 
Intellectually  Eenan  knows  of  "no  free  will  superior 
to  man's  that  acts  in  any  cognizable  manner,"  but  yet 
he  accepts  all  religions  as  good  within  their  limits  of 
idealism.  Only  the  compromisers  are  an  offence  to 
him.  He  feels  nearer  to  the  Ultramontanes  than  to 
the  Neo-Catholics.  The  result  of  this  attitude  is  to  draw 
a  sharp  line  between  the  domains  of  science  and 
faith.  There  can  be  no  antagonism  where  there  is  no 
contact.  Hence  he  has  done  the  church  of  his  youth 
a  great  service,  among  those  who  have  comprehended 
him,  by  illustrating  how  a  man  may  possess  a  faith 
that  does  not  possess  him,2  and  by  opposing  the  un- 
philosophic  attitude  toward  the  church  of  Voltaire's 
"  Bcrasez  1'infame,"  that  still  sways  the  democratic 
masses  of  France.  Here  his  influence  has  been  most 
definite  and  most  happy,  for  it  has  been  a  voice  for 
religious  peace  and  toleration. 

Such  views  of  philosophy  and  religion  imply  pride 
of  intellect  and  a  sense  of  superiority  to  his  fellows,  — • 

1  For  passages  of  similar  tenor,  see  Bourget's  essay,  p.  62  sqq. 

2  The  antithesis  belongs  to  Anatole  France. 


296  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

in  other  words,  an  aristocratic  temperament.  He  does 
not  think  the  mass  of  mankind  fit  to  enjoy  his  pleasures 
or  hold  his  creed.  He  dreads  democracy  in  society  and 
politics.1  "  All  civilization  is  the  work  of  aristocrats," 
says  the  Prior  in  "Caliban,"  and  in  the  same  play 
Prospero  thinks  labor  should  be  the  serf  of  thought, 
though  "  democrats  find  the  doctrine  monstrous." 
"  Noli  me  tangere  is  all  we  can  ask  of  democracy,"  he 
says  elsewhere ;  and  he  shudders  at  the  Americanizing 
of  society,  to  countervail  which  he  dreams  of  an  intel- 
lectual oligarchy  who  shall  so  hold  in  their  sole  control 
the  still  unguessed  forces  of  science  that  they  "  will 
reign  by  absolute  terror,  because  they  will  have  the 
existence  of  all  in  their  hands."  This  aristocratic 
spirit  appears  also  in  the  contemptuous  irony  of  his 
suggestion- that  Flaubert's  Homais,  the  typical  pro- 
vincial philistine,  may  after  all  be  the  best  theologian ; 
and  it  is  this  that  gives  its  sting  to  his  dissection  of 
Bdranger's  convivial  prayer,  where  glass  in  hand  the 
poet  begs  his  lady-love  to 

Lever  les  yeux  vers  ce  monde  invisible, 
Oil  pour  toujours  nous  nous  reunissons, 

as  a  melancholy  proof  of  the  "  incurable  religious 
mediocrity  "  of  France.2 

But  whether  Eenan  is  a  dilettante,  a  mystic,  or  an 
aristocrat,  he  is  always  a  fascinating  writer  to  the 
thoughtful.  His  style  is  like  his  mind,  subtle,  sinuous, 
apparently  clear,  and  yet  escaping  the  ultimate  analysis 
and  eluding  the  appreciation  of  ordinary  readers,  who 
miss  such  ornaments  of  diction  as  arrest  their  attention 

1  See  "  Caliban/'  "  Eau  de  Jouvence,"  and  "  lleforme  intellectuelle 
et  morale,"  this  last  written  in  view  of  the  disasters  of  1871. 

2  Questions  contemporaines,  p.  467. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      297 

in  Hugo  and  Michelet.  The  greater  number  admire  him 
for  his  skill  in  saving  sentiment  to  their  lack  of  faith, 
but  choice  spirits  discern  in  him  one  of  the  greatest 
and  most  varied  masters  of  French  in  his  century.  A 
distinguished  critic,  Mr.  Saintsbury,  has  called  his  style 
"a  direct  descendant  of  that  of  Rousseau  through 
Chateaubriand/'  but  its  charm  seems  rather  to  lie  in  a 
peculiar  vague  suggestiveness  and  spirituality.  Even 
from  a  purely  formal  side  it  shows  less  affinity  with 
these  writers  than  with  the  Hebrew  Scriptures  and  the 
Latin  and  Greek  classics,  while  in  its  vocabulary,  ex- 
cept perhaps  in  the  latest  pieces,  it  is  severely  simple 
and  restrained.  But  he  manipulates  these  limited  re- 
sources with  such  skill  that  rhythm,  metaphor,  and 
direct  description  always  seem  to  contain  more  than 
meets  the  ear,  their  outlines  dissolving,  as  some  critic 
has  delicately  said,  like  those  of  Corot's  landscapes, 
in  which  what  we  see  is  but  the  smaller  part  of  what 
we  discern.  Bourget  cites  a  passage  from  Kenan's  es- 
say on  Celtic  poetry  that  is  at  once  an  example  and  a 
description :  — 

Jamais  on  n'a  savoure  assez  longuement  ces  voluptes  de 
la  conscience,  ces  reminiscences  poetiques,  ou  se  croisent 
a  la  fois  toutes  les  sensations  de  la  vie,  si  vagues,  si 
profondes,  si  penetrantes,  que,  pour  peu  qu'elles  vinssent  a 
se  prolonger,  on  en  mourrait,  sans  qu'on  put  dire  si  c'est 
d'amertume  ou  de  douceur. 

Such  phrases  as  "  voluptds  de  la  conscience  "  and  their 
delicate  definition  as  "  reminiscences  at  once  vague  and 
deep  and  searching  and  overpowering,  and  yet  neither 
sweet  nor  bitter,"  should  show  how  far  Kenan  is  from 
being  a  direct  descendant  of  Kousseau. 

Kenan's  influence  was  for  years  the  strongest  single 


298  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

element  in  French  literature.  "In  him  more  than  in 
any  of  his  contemporaries,"  says  Mr.  Monod,  "  breathed 
the  soul  of  modern  France."  To  him  is  directly  due 
the  reawakening  of  religious  curiosity,  which  leads  to 
such  analyses  as  Daudet's  " L'fivangeliste "  and  "La 
Petite  paroisse,"  as  Bourget's  "Nouveaux  pastels,"  and 
Huysmaus'  "  En  route."  But  this  owes  less  to  any 
teaching  of  his  than  to  the  example  of  his  dilettantism, 
which  in  his  imitators  becomes  a  skeptical  power  of 
varied  enjoyment  of  the  results  of  a  previous,  positive, 
creative  period.  Doubtless  Eenan  is  not  the  originator 
of  this  "  state  of  soul "  which  is  the  natural  result  of 
the  overwhelming  complexity  of  Parisian  civilization, 
but  his  peculiar  training  made  him  its  ablest  and 
frankest  exponent,  and  so  he  became  leader  and  prophet 
to  many  in  that  perplexed  fin  de  siecle,  which  shrank 
with  the  dread  of  old  experience  from  what  one  of 
its  ablest  essayists  called  "the  horrible  mania  of  cer- 
tainty." And  the  French  criticism  of  to-day  still 
seems  "  weary  of  all  except  of  understanding." 1  It 
finds  its  satisfaction  only  in  protean  inconsistency, 
that  supplies  ever  new  and  changing  points  of  view. 
It  denies  the  supernatural  with  easy  tolerance,  born 
of  a  conviction  that  no  faith  is  worth  a  struggle,  much 
less  a  martyrdom. 

It  was  therefore  no  favorable  sign  that  so  much  of 
the  best  talent  of  France  should  have  turned  to  criti- 
cism. Never  in  its  history  had  systematic  criticism 
been  more  rigorously  dogmatic,  or  psychological  criti- 
cism shown  more  exquisite  power  of  appreciation,  than 
from  1880  to  1900,  never  had  critical  work  been  so 
closely  followed  or  met  with  such  reward.  A  volume 

1  Bourget,  Essais,  61 ,  attributes  this  sentiment  to  Virgil  in  a  simi- 
lar period  of  Latin  culture. 


.      THE  EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY   AND   CRITICISM.      299 

of  psychological  studies  in'  literature  established  the 
fame  of  Bourget ;  the  weekly  articles  of  Sarcey,  France, 
and  Lemaitre  were  literary  events ;  the  scholarly  confer- 
ences of  Bruuetiere  held  the  close  attention  of  crowded 
lecture  rooms ;  and  these  are  but  first  among  many.1 

Among  the  immediate  followers  of  Taine,  Zola  alone 
showed  great  force  or  originality  as  a  critic,  though  he 
was  much  more  dogmatic  than  judicious,  and  was  far 
from  practising  in  his  novels  the  theories  that  he  advo- 
cated in  his  critical  essays.2  Also  related  to  Taine, 
though  fundamentally  antagonistic  to  Zola,  is  Brune- 
tiere.  He  shared  with  Zola  Taine's  objectivity  and 
pessimism ;  but  he  added  to  this  a  logical  synthesis 
that  Zola,  as  a  critic,  did  not  possess.  This,  with  his 
delicate  taste  and  a  learning  alike  minute  and  immense, 
borne  lightly  by  a  style  that  is  always  keen  and  cutting 
and  sometimes  superciliously  contemptuous,  made  him 
more  popular  with  the  public  than  with  his  fellow 
critics.3  He  was  the  most  thoroughgoing  of  critical 

1  It  would  be  unjust  not  to  name,  though  but  in  foot-note,  Emile 
Faguet  (born  1847),  editor  of  the  "  Classiques  populaires  "  and  author 
of  a  series  of  critical  studies  of  the  chief  writers  of  the  sixteenth,  seven- 
teenth, eighteenth,  and  nineteenth  centuries.     Among  younger  men, 
E.  Rod,  G.  Pellissier,  author  of  the  perspicuous  "  Mouvement  litteraire 
au  xix.  siecle,"  and  several  volumes  of  literary  essays,  and  G.  Lanson, 
whose  "  Histoire  de  la  litterature  fran£aise  "  is  one  of  the  best  popular 
literary  histories  in  any  language,  deserve  special  notice. 

2  Especially,  Le  Roman  experimental,  1880 ;  Les  Romanciers  natu- 
ralistes,  1881  ;  Le  Naturalisme  au  theatre,  1881. 

3  Born  1849,  died  1906.     Principal  works :    Histoire  et  litterature, 
3  series,  1884-1886  ;  Etudes  critiques,  6  series,  1880-1898  ;  Nouvelles 
questions  de  critique,  1890  ;  Le  Roman  naturaliste,  1883  ;  L'Evolution 
des  genres,  1890;  sqq.     Les  Epoques  du  the'Stre,  L'Evolution  de  la 
pocsie  lyrique;  Manuel  de  1'histoire  de  la  litterature  fran9aise,  1897; 
Discours  academiques,  1900.     He  was  for  many  years  editor  in  chief 
of  the  "  Revue  des  deux  mondes."     On  the  character  of  Brunetiere's 
criticism,  see  Lemaitre,  Contempo rains,  i.  217. 


300  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

evolutionists,  more  intent  on  "classifying,  weighing, 
comparing,  than  on  enjoying  or  helping  others  to  en- 
joy "  (Lemaitre).  His  great  work  was  to  re-establish  a 
truer  perspective  between  the  Classicists,  the  eighteenth 
century,  the  Romanticists  and  the  present  age.  Through- 
out he  saw  only  the  natural  evolution  of  literary  tradi- 
tion ;  and  while  he  mocked  unsparingly  the  exaggerated 
pretensions  of  the  Naturalists,  he  recognized  "  the  justi- 
fication of  a  movement  that  has  been  drawing  our 
writers  for  some  years  back  from  the  cloudy  summits 
of  old-time  Romanticism  to  the  level  plains  of  reality." 
Indeed,  it  should  be  in  the  nature  of  such  a  critic  to 
explain  rather  than  to  judge,  though  Brunetiere  was  con- 
strained to  give  a  freer  scope  to  individuality  in  genius 
than  accorded  with  the  system  of  Taine,  and  allowed  him- 
self, while  pursuing  his  undeviating  way,  to  shoot  many 
barbed  arrows  to  right  and  left,  especially  at  Zola  and  the 
Goncourts,  that  could  not  but  arouse  unnecessary  rancor. 
More  avowedly  subjective,  more  in  the  spirit  of 
Re  nan,  is  Jules  Lemaitre,1  who  began  his  career  as  a 
Parnassian  poet,  and  won  his  first  critical  successes  in 
1884  by  essays  on  Renan,  Zola,  and  Ohnet.2  His  criti- 
cal style  is  pregnant  and  witty,  supple  and  ironical, 
vivacious  and  picturesque,  frequently  suggesting  Renan, 
with  whose  temperament  and  conception  of  life  he  felt 
a  strong  affinity.  Thus  he,  too,  makes  no  effort  to  be 

1  Born  1853.    Critical  essays:  Les  Contemporains,   5  vols.,  1886, 
sqq.     Impressions  de  theatre,   10  vols.,   1888-1898;    Theories  et  im- 
pressions,   1904;   En    Marge   des  vieux  livres,   1905;   Racine,    1908. 
Collected  tales:    Serenus,    1886;   Dix  contes,  1891;  Les  Rois,  1893. 
Dramas:    Revoltee,   1889;    Depute  Leveau,    1890;    Mariage  blanc, 
1891 ;  Flipote,  1893  ;  Myrrha,  1894 ;  Le  Pardon,  1895  ;  L'Age  difficile, 
1895;  L'Aine'e,  1898;  La  Massiere,  1905. 

2  "Dcpuis  Tarticle  de  M.  Lemaitre,  bien  des  gens  continuent  de  lire  M. 
Ohnet,  mais  on  ne  trouve  plus  personne  qui  s'en  vante."  Lanson,  p.  1082 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   HISTORY  AND   CRITICISM.      301 

systematic,  nor  is  he  anxious  for  rigid  consistency. 
Criticism,  he  has  said,  is  "  a  representation  of  the 
world,  like  other  branches  of  literature,  and  hence  by 
its  nature  as  relative,  as  vain,  and  therefore  as  inter- 
esting as  they." 

But  the  full  flower  of  critical  Kenanism  may  be  seen 
in  Anatole  France,1  who,  like  Lemaitre,  began  his  lit- 
erary career  as  a  Parnassian,  and  has  achieved  some 
distinction  in  fiction  by  his  delicately  critical  analysis 
of  passion,  at  first  playfully  tender  in  its  irony,  but 
later,  under  the  influence  of  his  critical  antagonism  to 
Brunetiere,  growing  keener,  stronger,  and  more  bitter. 
In  "  Thais,"  which  has  since  been  made  the  subject  of 
a  popular  opera,  he  has  undertaken  to  show  the  bond 
of  sympathy  that  unites  the  pessimistic  skeptic  to  the 
Christian  ascetic,  since  both  despise  the  world  ;  in  "  Lys 
rouge  "  he  traces  the  perilously  narrow  line  that  sepa- 
rates love  from  hate  ;  and  in  "  Je*rome  Cogniard  "  he  has 
given  us  "  the  most  radical  breviary  of  skepticism  that 
has  appeared  since  Montaigne."  All  this  is  far  more  the 
fiction  of  a  critic  than  of  a  romancer.  The  stories  are 
essays  in  Eenanism.  He  says  himself  that  "  criticism 
is  a  sort  of  novel  for  the  use  of  circumspect  and  curious 
minds,"  since  in  his  view  both  are  essentially  autobi- 
ographical. "  There  is  no  objective  criticism  any  more 
than  there  is  an  objective  art.  ...  To  be  perfectly  frank 
the  critic  should  say,  Gentlemen,  I  propose  to  talk  about 
myself  with  regard  to  Shakspere,  Kacine,  Pascal,  Goethe." 

1  Born  1844.  Principal  works  —  Critical :  La  Vie  litteraire,  2  vols. 
1888,  1892;  Histoire  contemporaire,  4  vols.  1897-1900;  Opinions  so- 
ciales,  1902  ;  L'lle  des  Pingouins,  1908 ;  Les  Contes  de  Jacques  Tourne- 
broche,  1909.  Philosophy:  Le  Jardin  d'^picure,  1894.  Fiction:  Le 
Crime  de  Silvestre  Bonnard,  1881  ;  Thais,  1890 ;  Les  Opinions  de 
Jerome  Cogniard,  1893;  Lys  rouge,  1894.  Drama:  Cramquebille, 
1903.  Biography:  La  Vie  de  Jeanne  d'Arc,  1908. 


302  MODERN    FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

So  France's  criticism  is  rather  of  life  than  of  books,  and 
finds  its  happiest  expression  in  his  "  Social  Opinions  " 
and  the  genial  play  of  irony  in  the  series  that  he  has 
called,  not  without  satire,  "  Contemporary  History,"  or 
in  "  Cramquebille,"  his  very  successful  socialistic  drama 
of  Parisian  life.  In  biography  it  is  the  psychological 
element  that  dominates  his  work,  as  may  be  seen  in  his 
recent  striking  study  of  "  Jeanne  d'Arc." 

Criticism  appears  to  Anatole  France  the  most  recent 
and  possibly  the  ultimate  evolution  of  literary  expres- 
sion, "  admirably  suited  to  a  highly  civilized  society, 
rich  in  souvenirs  and  old  traditions.  It  proceeds  from 
philosophy  and  history,  and  demands  for  its  development 
an  absolute  intellectual  liberty.  It  takes  the  place  of 
theology.  The  universal  doctor,  the  Thomas  Aquinas 
of  the  nineteenth  century,  is  Sainte-Beuve."  "  Criticism 
is  the  last  in  date  of  all  literary  forms,  and  it  will  end 
by  absorbing  them  all." 1 

Anatole  France  is  an  ideal  representative  of  the  dilet- 
tante spirit,  combining  in  his  style,  as  Lemaitre  remarks, 
traces  of  Eacine,  Voltaire,  Flaubert,  and  Kenan,  but  so 
individualized  as  to  become  "  perfection  in  grace,  the 
extreme  flowering  of  the  Latin  genius."  Meantime  the 
mystic  side  of  Eenanism  found  its  expression  in  Charles 
Morice,2  the  obscure  critic  of  Symbolism  ;  and  while 
each  of  these  —  Bnmetiere,  Lemaitre,  France,  Morice, 
—  was  addressing  his  little  cultured  company,  the  great 
mass  of  the  reading  and  theatre-going  public  bowed  be- 
fore the  philistine  sceptre  of  Francisque  Sarcey.3 

1  Vie  litteraire,  i.,  Preface  (condensed).    See  also  Huneker,  Egoists, 
pp.  139-166. 

2  La  Litterature  de  tout  a  1'heure,  1889. 

8  Born  1828,  died  1899  ;  journalist  since  1858.  That  his  articles  were 
not  republished  in  book  form  contributed  to  prolong  his  authority. 


THE   EVOLUTION    OF   LYKIC   POETRY.  303 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY. 

THERE  is  a  sense  in  which  Hugo  is  the  father  of  modern 
French  poetry,  but  his  descendants  have  been  less 
dutiful  than  admiring,  so  that,  as  has  been  already  said, 
he  seems  rather  to  bar  the  current  of  poetic  evolution 
than  to  divert  or  guide  it.  Hugo's  poetic  children  bear 
the  print  of  his  outward  features,  but  they  do  not 
inherit  his  hopeful  courage.  Much  of  their  work  is 
of  great  beauty,  and  its  remarkable  variety  is  of  signi- 
ficance in  any  effort  to  comprehend  the  past  and  to 
foreshadow  the  near  future  of  French  literary  genius 
and  intellectual  life.  Yet  through  all  or  almost  all 
of  their  writing  we  may  trace  beneath  the  mask  of 
Hugo's  rhetoric  and  prosody  the  spirit  of  Sainte-Beuve 
and  Taine.  Pessimism,  violent,  gloomy,  sad,  or  frivo- 
lous and  hedonistic,  is  the  colored  thread  that  runs 
through  the  warp  and  woof  of  fin  de  siecle  verse,  both 
among  the  Parnassian  artists  for  art  and  in  the  deca- 
dent or  deliquescent  schools  of  Symbolism.  There  is  at 
present  a  marked  reaction  toward  classical  prosody,  but 
the  advocates  of  the  studiously  unconventional  still  find 
favor. 

The  first  lyric  expression  of  Romanticism  had  been 
fundamentally   egoistic   and    individualized.      Thjjg   is 

^  •^^•*"***—  ~- 

charaftfoTJatin  of  Lafliartinftj  of  HugoT  and  of  De  Musset. 
But  as  the  movement  spent  its  first  force,  two  divergent 
tendencies  checked  and  modified  ifo 


liberty]     First,  the  socialistic  theories  that  we  connect 


304  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

0 

with  the  names  of  Eourier  and  Saint-Simon  under- 
mined the  political  basis  of  individualism.  A  discon- 
tented or  at  least  a  restless  mental  state  succeeded  to 
the  hopeful  energy  of  1830  after  the  collapse  of  the 
Republic  of  1848.  This  generous  discontent  found  its 
reflection  in  the  sombre,  self-centred,  yet  purposeful 
poetry  of  De  Vigny.  On  the  other  hand,  the  aesthetic 
liberties  of  the  Romanticists,  the  wanton  gambols  of 
individualism  in  metre  and  language,  led  inevitably  to 
a  reaction ;  and  the  exaggerated  appreciation  of  poetic 
form  found  its  completest  expression  in  Gautier. 

These  two  forces  acted  together  or  apart  on  all  forms 
of  literature,  but  in  prose  fiction  they  were  for  a  time 
dominated  by  the  genius  of  Balzac  and  by  the  scien- 
tific determinism  or  skepticism  of  Taine  and  Kenan, 
and  in  the  drama  their  action  is  obscured,  at  least  in 
the  strongest  work,  by  the  subordination  of  art  to 
social  ethics.  The  two  tendencies  appear  most  plainly 
in  poetry,  where  the  traditions  of  De  Vigny  are  nobly 
upborne  by  the  Parnassians,  while  in  Banville  one  can 
already  trace  the  incipient  decadence  toward  art  for 
artificiality  of  the  school  of  Gautier,  the  labored 
futility  of  whose  poetry  Banville  best  reflects  in  the 
substance  of  his  verses,  though  in  outward  form  and 
rhyme  he  illustrates  and  elaborates  the  theories  of 
Sainte-Beuve. 

In  a  posthumous  essay  Banville  has  described  him- 
self as  a  follower  of  the  Graces  of  old  Greece,  while 
the  contemporaries  of  his  later  years  seemed  to  him  wor- 
shippers of  the  newer  graces,  Absinthe,  Neurosis,  and 
Morphine.  In  claiming  this  classical  affiliation  the 
poet  wished  to  class  himself  with  those  Parnassians 
who  took  Hugo  for  their  master  in  prosody  and  rhe- 
torical form,  while  in  their  hedonistic  ethics  and  in  their 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF  LYRIC   POETEY.  305 

passionless  objectivity  they  followed  Gautier.  The 
very  titles  of  his  earlier  volumes  J  suggest  their  impas- 
sive nature.  From  the  very  outset  he  appears  as  a 
poet  of  a  disillusioned  age,  a  product  of  the  corroding 
spirit  of  determinism  in  philosophy  and  the  cynical 
materialism  of  the  Second  Empire.  He  shows  no 
faith  save  in  his  senses  and  the  joy  they  bring,  the 
delight  of  eye  and  ear,  the  harmony  of  color  and  sound. 
He  suffered  neither  anxious  thought  nor  unreasoning 
passion  to  ruffle  his  serene  calm. 

Like  Gautier,  Banville_wrote  a  great  mass  of  critical 
but  ephemeral  feuilletons,  some  equally  ephemeral 
dramas,  and  an  essay  on  prosody  that  won  him  the 
title  "  Legislator  of  Parnassus."  He  wrote  also  many 
prose  tales  ;  but  the  best  of  these  ring  false  in  spite  of 
their  melodious  warmth,  and  the  laxity  of  their  morals 
mars  the  delicate  grace  of  their  style,  for  there  is  a 
violation  of  essential  congruity  when  the  characters 
of  the  "  Come'die  humaine  "  are  dressed  in  fairy  gauze. 
But  it  is  as  a  poet  alone  that  Banville  survives,  and 
it  is  his  poetry  alone  that  merits  special  study.  We 
should  expect  of  one  who  schools  himself  to  hide 
the  emotions  that  survive  his  philosophy  that  the 
lyric  note  of  personal  experience  would  be  subordi- 
nated to  the  feelings  common  to  humanity  or  to  de- 
scriptive reproductions  of  nature  and  legend  as  they 

1  Banville  was  born  1823  and  died  1891.  (Euvres,  8  vols.,  1873-1878, 
and  Dernieres  poe'sies,  1893.  Chronology  of  the  chief  collections: 
Cariatides,  1842;  Stalactites,  1846;  Odelettes,  1856;  Odes  funambu- 
lesques,  1857;  Nouvelles  odes  funambulesques,  1869;  Idyles  prus- 
siennes,  1871.  Dramas:  Gringoire,  1866;  Socrate  et  sa  femme,  1885. 
Fiction :  Contes  feeriques  ;  Esquisses  parisiennes,  scenes  de  la  vie,  1859. 
Criticism:  Traite  de  la  poesie  fran9aise,  1872.  Critical  articles  on 
Banville  :  Spronck,  Les  Artistes  litteraires,  p.  299  ;  Lemaitre,  Contem- 
porains,  i.  7  ;  and  Nineteenth  Century,  August,  1891. 

20 


306  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

appear  in  the  posthumous  poems  of  De  Vigny.  But 
in  Banville  the  substance  tends  more  and  more  with 
each  succeeding  collection  to  become  subordinate  to 
form,  more  and  more  rhyme  becomes  the  chosen  field 
for  the  display  of  his  virtuosity.  He  revives  the  arti- 
ficial stanzas  of  the  fourteenth  century,  the  rondeau, 
the  triolet,  and  the  rest,  and  even  betters  the  instruc- 
tion, dancing  in  his  "  Odes  funambulesques,"  true 
"Tight-rope  Odes,"  on  the  wire  he  has  stretched  for 
his  muse,  with  an  easy  assurance  that  arouses  a 
sort  of  amused  admiration  for  these  trifling  odelettes, 
frivolous  and  fanciful,  yet  in  their  kind  of  great 
excellence. 

It  is  no  small  thing  in  an  age  oppressed  with  Natu- 
ralism to  preserve  an  inexhaustible  flow  of  gayety, 
though  it  be  empty, — to  write,  as  Lemaitre  wittily  puts 
it,  with  the  one  idea  of  expressing  no  idea.  Banville 
confesses  ingenuously  that  his  ambition  is  to  ally  the 
buffoon  element  to  the  lyric,  while  rigorously  adhering 
to  the  form  of  the  ode,  and  to  obtain,  as  in  a  true  lyric, 
his  impression,  comic  or  otherwise,  by  combinations  of 
rhymes  and  harmonious  or  peculiar  effects  of  sound. 
He  is  convinced  that  the  musical  effect  of  verse  can 
awaken  what  it  will  in  the  reader's  mind,  "  and  even 
create  that  supernatural  and  divine  thing,  laughter," 
as  well  as  "joy,  enthusiastic  emotion,  and  beauty." 
Thus  he  approaches  Wagner's  theory  of  a  music 
drama,  though  our  poet  is  more  modest  in  his  aspira- 
tions, and  indeed  only  carries  to  its  extreme  a  device 
practised  in  all  ages  of  French  verse,  —  by  Villon  as 
well  as  Piron,  and  by  none  more  than  by  his  favorite 
Eonsard. 

The  gift  of  musical  speech  was  his  from  the  first 
Several  poems  of  his  youthful  "  Cariatides  "  sing  them- 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY.      307 

selves  into  the  ear  with  strange  melody,1  and  others 
among  his  satiric  verses  have  a  curious  metallic  quality 
that  foreshadows  his  future  mastery.2  But  the  elabora- 
tion of  many  of  the  later  chants  royaux  and  virelais 
must  always  be  caviare  to  most  readers.  In  these 
wrestlings  between  the  subject  and  the  intricate  rhyme, 
the  former,  even  if  like  Jacob  it  come  off  victor,  is 
almost  sure  to  have  a  sinew  shrivelled  in  the  contest. 
Yet  it  is  interesting  to  note  that  while  this  will-o'-the- 
wisp  rhyme  is  leading  the  poet's  fancy  where  it  will, 
the  very  phantasmagoria  that  it  evokes  have  their 
charm.  Our  curiosity  is  excited  as  we  watch  the  poet 
winding  himself  out  of  his  own  labyrinth;  yes,  this 
very  difficulty  gives  a  fillip  to  his  own  imagination,  and 
at  times  reveals  to  him  unexpected  flowers  of  preciosity. 
Such  an  art  of  poetry  is  hardly  adapted  to  serious 
subjects  of  any  kind.  His  satires  are  mocking  vers  de 
societe  or  laments  that  pleasures  must  be  bought  that 
should  be  given.3  Often  his  thought  takes  the  form  of 
parody  of  some  popular  piece  or  style ;  or,  perhaps,  like 
some  busy  bee  of  humor,  he  builds  an  elaborate  fabric 
of  formal  nonsense  where  the  wit  lurks  in  grotesque 
juxtapositions,  fantastic  figures,  serious  verses  upset  by 
some  impertinent  bit  of  slang,  the  promise  of  wisdom 
ending  in  ludicrous  commonplace,  all  clothed  in  teasing 
rhymes  and  lit  up  with  countless  puns.  Twice  only 
was  Banville  betrayed  into  serious  emotion,  not  much 
to  his  poetic  advantage.  Toward  the  close  of  the  Em- 
pire the  counsellors  of  Napoleon  were  made  the  butts 
for  the  poisoned  darts  of  his  satire,  and  during  the 

1  E.  g.,  "Confession,"  and  the  second  part  of  the  "  Songe  d'hiver." 

2  E.  g.,  The  sixth  part  of  "  Ceux  qui  meurent  et  ceux  qui  com- 
battent." 

3  E.  g.,  La  Malediction  de  Venus. 


308  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

siege  of  Paris  the  bitterness  of  unreasoning  hate  over- 
flowed in  his  "  Idylles  prussiennes."  But  in  his  nor- 
mal mood  Banville  much  prefers  Greek  mythology  to 
modern  politics,1  and  finds  his  favorite  subjects  in  the 
^Renaissance  or  in  the  picturesque  aspects  of  literary 
and  artistic  Bohemia.  The  gayety  of  nocturnal  Paris 
tricked  out  in  gauzy  spangles  has  also  its  charm  for 
him ;  and  so  indeed  has  anything  that  is  quite  aside 
from  the  every-day  life  and  duties  of  Philistia,  for 
which,  as  for  its  laureate  Scribe,  he  had  a  deep  and 
life-long  aversion. 

Here  he  is  most  at  home,  and  paints  exquisite  pic- 
tures whose  clear-cut  outlines  rival  the  brilliancy  of 
their  color,  whose  every  phrase  thrills  with  the  joy  of 
art  and  beauty.2  He  is  more  the  artist  for  art  than 
even  Gautier,  for  he  has  not  a  trace  of  that  arriere  pen- 
see  of  death  that  haunts  the  mediaevalized  mind  of  the 
author  of  "  Albertus."  Indeed,  Banville  is  the  most 
thorough  pagan  of  all  the  moderns,  light-hearted  even 
to  his  septuagenarian  end,  and  leaving  behind  him  as 
the  sum  of  his  ephemeral  wisdom  the  beneficent  lines : 

La  plan&te  est  vieille,  mais 
Comme  la  jeune  fille  est  jeune. 

1  E.  g.,  La  Voie  lactee,  Clymene,  Le  Jugement  de  Paris.     The  last 
is  the  most  elaborate,  but  all  are  frigid. 

2  E.  g.,  among  descriptive   pieces,  L'Exil  des  dieux,  Le  Banquet 
des  dieux,  Le  Sanglier,  La  Mort  d'amour,  La  Fleur  de  sang,  La  Rose ; 
among  the  humorous  and  gay,  Eldorado,  En  Habit  zinzolin,  and  the 
Odelette  a  Mery ;   as  a  model  of  metrical  art,  the  last  four  lines  of 
"  Carmen  " :  — 

II  faut  h,  1'hexametre,  ainsi  qu'aux  purs  arceaux 
Des  e"glises  du  nord  et  des  palais  arabes, 
Le  calme  pour  pouvoir  dt'rouler  les  anneaux 
Saints  et  mystc-rieux  de  ses  douze  syllabes. 

Noteworthy  also  are  the  ten  lines  that  immediately  follow,  beginning: 
Nous  n'irons  plus  aux  bois,  les  lauriers  sont  coupe's. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY.      309 

Banville's  easy  cheerfulness,  his  unruffled  optimism 
that  persistently  closed  its  eyes  to  more  than  half  of 
life,  will  account  for  the  comparative  neglect  of  his 
verses  in  a  time  more  conscious  of  its  faults  than  of  its 
power  to  overcome  them,  an  age  that  found  truer  repre- 
sentatives of  the  nobler  aspects  of  its  pessimism  in  the 
Parnassians  and  a  more  intense  expression  of  its  morbid 
decadent  tendencies  in  Banville's  unfortunate  friend 
Charles _Bjmdekire,Jhe_progenitor  of  the  latter  Symbol- 
ists, who  represent  a  state  of  weary  yet  restless  reaction 
from  the  confidence  of  scientific  determinism,  to  which 
the  Parnassians  oppose  the  dignified  reserve  and  stoic 
calm  of  the  philosophic  mind.  These,  therefore,  are  the 
result  in  poetry  of  an  earlier  phase  of  the  national  spirit, 
and  for  this  as  well  as  for  their  intrinsic  qualities  they 
have  the  first  claim  to  our  attention. 

It  is  curious  and  possibly  significant  that  two  of  the 
chief  Parnassians  were  not  French  by  birth,  and  one  of 
them  not  even  by  descent.  Leconte  de  Lisle,  though 
older  than  either  Banville  or  Baudelaire,  was  born  in 
the  island  colony  of  Reunion,  and  did  not  remove  per- 
manently to  France  till  1847,  where  he  at  first  threw 
himself  into  the  Republican  agitation  with  much  ardor, 
and  so  began  his  literary  career  later  than  they  after 
his  political  hopes  had  been  dashed  by  the  coup  d'etat.1 
His  "  Poemes  antiques  "  were  not  published  till  1853, 

1  He  died  in  1894.  French  criticism  of  his  work  may  be  found  in 
Pellissier's  Mouvement  litteraire,  p.  282 ;  in  Lanson's  Litterature 
franchise,  p.  1036 ;  in  Brunetiere's  Poesie  lyrique  and  Litterature  con- 
temporaine ;  in  France,  Vie  litteraire,  i.  95,  and  Lemaitre,  Contempo- 
rains,  ii.  5.  All  these  have  been  consulted  in  the  preparation  of  this 
essay.  Cp.  also  Jean  Dornis,  Leconte  de  Lisle  intime,  in  Revue  des 
deux  mondes,  May,  1895,  and  Paul  Monceaux  in  Revue  bleue,  June, 
1895.  The  posthumous  "  Derniers  poemes  "  appeared,  with  interesting 
literary  essays  on  his  lyric  predecessors,  in  1895.  His  "  Histoire  du 
christianisme  "  and  "  Catechisme  republicaiu  "  were  published  anony- 
mously. 


310  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

when  the  position  of  Banville  was  already  secure.  His 
own  ascent  of  Parnassus  was  more  laborious.  As  late 
as  1867  he  could  secure  but  two  votes  in  an  election  to 
the  Academy  that  resulted  in  the  choice  of  Sardou,  and 
it  was  not  till  1886  that  he  entered  that  body,  taking 
the  seat  made  illustrious  by  Victor  Hugo,  who  had  been 
one  of  the  two  to  favor  his  former  candidacy. 

Meantime  his  literary  baggage  had  been  enlarged 
by  "Poemes  et  poe'sies  "  (1855),  "  Poemes  barbares  " 
(1859  and  1862),  and  "  Poemes  tragiques "  (1884). 
He  had  distinguished  himself  also  by  admirable  trans- 
jllations  of  Theocritus  and  Anacreon,  Hesiod,  Homer, 
(Sophocles,  and  ^Eschylus,  studies  from  which  he  drew 
much  of  his  own  exquisite  culture.  He  had  essayed 
Horace  also,  had  practised  his  pen  in  criticism,  and 
had  written  two  books  of  a  decidedly  radical  tendency, 
a  popular  History  of  Christianity  and  a  Republican 
Catechism,  which  it  is  but  just'  to  say  were  both  pub- 
lished anonymously.  But  whatever  might  be  the 
spirit  of  his  politics,  into  his  poetry  he  carried  always 
the  temper  of  a  scholar  and  a  lover  of  the  classic 
poets,  from  whom  he  learned  that  objectivity  which 
enabled  him  before  the  publication  of  Hugo's  "  Legend 
of  the  Centuries  "  to  nurse  the  failing  sense  for  epic 
poetry  in  France,  while  at  the  same  time  it  marked 
his  opposition  both  to  the  Romantic  School  in  general 
arid  to  its  rebellious  offspring,  Baudelaire,  though  it 
is  shared  in  a  measure  by  De  Vigny  and  Gautier. 
Resembling  Banville  in  his  preference  for  classical 
themes,  he  differs  wholly  from  him  in  the  serious 
purpose  and  scientific  undercurrent  of  his  verse.  "  Art 
and  science,"  he  says  in  his  preface  to  the  "  Poernes 
antiques,"  "  have  long  been  separated.  Now  they 
should  tend  to  unite  closely  if  not  to  mingle.  The 


THE    EVOLUTION   OF   LYEIC   POETRY.  311 

one  has  been  the  primitive  revelation  of  the  ideal  as 
contained  in  external  nature;  the  other  has  been  its 
rational  study  and  luminous  exposition.  But  art  has 
lost  that  intuitive  spontaneity,  or  rather  it  has  ex- 
hausted it.  Science  has  for  its  office  to  reveal  to  art 
I  the  sense  of  its  forgotten  traditions,  which  it  can  then 
{  revive  in  artistic  form."  In  other  words,  to  Leconte 
de  lisle  and  to  the  Parnassians  who  follow  him, 
poetry  should  be  naturalistic.  But  he  makes  an  im- 
portant reserve,  for  elsewhere  he  says :  "  The  beauti- 
ful is  not  the  servant  of  the  true,  for  it  contains  the 
truth,  human  and  divine."  And  again  he  has  written : 
"  None  possesses  poetry  who  is  not  exclusively  possessed 
by  it."  This,  then,  is  his  philosophy  of  his  art,  and  it 
is  in  this  sense  only  that  he  regards  that  art  as  an 
end  in  itself.  For  he  is  no  juggler  with  words,  still  less 
with  symbolic  impressions.  He  has  always  a  definite 
image  before  his  poet's  eye,  a  definite  purpose  in  his 
mind,  which  is  indeed  no  meaner  aim  than  to  show  the 
gradual  unfolding  of  the  ideal  life  in  the  human  mind, 
to  trace  the  tentative  Teachings  of  religious  thought 
into  the  legendary  past  and  hidden  future  of  the  race. 

Such  philosophic  calm  was  a  refreshing  novelty  in 
1853.  Men  called  him  "First  of  the  Impassives." 
Not  that  he  did  not  feel,  and  keenly,  —  that  no 
reader  of  "  Manchy  "  or  of  "  L'lllusion  supreme  "J  could 
fail  to  perceive,  —  but  that  he  consistently  repressed  his 
feeling.  He  protested,  both  by  precept  and  example, 
against  the  "  professional  use  of  tears,"  the  "  cry  of 
the  heart,"  and  such  like  Eornantic  devices.  For  all 
subjectivity  that  could  not  be  purified  of  its  egoism 
was  to  him  a  corruption  and  cheapening  of  art,  while 

1  Barbaras,  p.  190;  Tragiques,  36.  The  pages  are  from  the  IGmo 
edition. 


312  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

a  great  poet  and  an  irreproachable  artist  seemed  to 
him  "  identical  terms." 1  Hence,  though  he  would 
have  hesitated  at  Flaubert's  oracle,  "  The  idea  is  born 
of  form,"  he  naturally  gave  more  heed  to  the  chastened 
perfection  of  his  prosody  than  the  Eomanticists,  while 
allowing  his  verses  less  freedom  than  Banville.  They 
are,  indeed,  the  most  regular  of  the  period,  for  the 
most  part  classic  alexandrines  after  Boileau's  heart, 
or,  if  the  Komantic  type  of  that  verse  appear,  it  will 
be  in  its  simplest  form.  His  rhymes,  too,  are  stately, 
though  usually  rich  and  often  rare.  In  this,  as  in  his 
style,  he  approaches  the  splendid  brilliancy  of  Hugo, 
while  nearly  attaining  the  clean-cut  cameos  of  Gautier. 
But  his  precision,  his  self-possession,  his  perfect  con- 
trol of  all  the  processes  of  poetic  art,  inspire  in  the 
general  reader  respectful  admiration  rather  than  hearty 
sympathy,  and  make  him  particularly  the  poet's  poet. 

In  his  philosophy  this  student  of  religions  is  as  pes- 
simistic, as  skeptical,  as  Baudelaire  or  De  Vigny.2  He 
makes  his  Cain  —  or  "  Qain,"  as  the  name  is  spelled 
in  recent  editions  —  bid  defiance  to  his  Judge  in 
these  words :  — 

Thou  sad,  thou  jealous  God,  who  veilest  thy  face, 
Thou  lying  God  who  saidst  thy  work  was  good, 
My  breath,  thou  moulder  of  the  antique  clay, 
Some  day  shall  rouse  thy  victim  quivering. 
Thou  shalt  say,  Pray !  and  he  shall  answer,  No.8 

1  Cp.  Les  Montreurs  (Barbares,  p.  222),  but  also  Bruneticre, 
Poe'sie  lyrique,  ii.  156-163. 

'*  Cp.  Le  Vceu  supreme,  Aux  morts,  and  Aux  modernes  (Barbares, 
pp.  219,  232,  356). 

3  It  is  said  that  only  the  intercessions  of  De  Heredia  rescued  this- 
poem  from  the  flames.  The  lines  cited  are  :  — 

Dieu  triste,  dieu  jaloux,  qui  derobes  ta  face, 

Dieu  qui  mentais,  disant  que  ton  oeuvre  etait  bon, 

Mon  souffle,  o  petrisseur  de  1'antique  limon, 

Un  jour  redressera  ta  victime  vivace, 

Tu  lui  diras,  Adore;  Elle  repondra,  Non.   (Barbares,  p.  18.) 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF  LYRIC   POETRY.  313 

Like  Lucretius,  his  study  of  religions  has  not  made 
him  love  religion.  Like  Gautier,  his  only  divinity  is 
beauty,  and  to  the  very  last,1  as  we  should  expect  in 
the  classical  scholar,  it  is  plastic  beauty,  beauty  of 
form  that  most  appeals  to  him,  though  there  are 
occasional  notes  of  noble  patriotism,  among  which  the 
"  Sacre  de  Paris  "  (Tragiques,  76)  is  most  memorable. 
His  interest  in  religious  manifestations  is  really  the 
interest  of  revolt.  For  all  his  apparent  calmness,  he 
is  militant  at  bottom,  thoroughly  in  touch  with  the 
restless  skepticism  of  an  epoch  that  is  seeking  a  new 
basis  for  ethics,  and,  because  it  finds  none,  is  forcing 
itself  ever  to  renew  its  conviction  of  the  insufficiency 
of  the  old  moral  sanctions  by  striving  to  realize  in 
poetic  fancy  the  various  solutions  that  mankind  has 
conceived  for  the  eternal  problem  of  life. 

He  brings  to  this  task  a  spirit  repelled  by  the  philis- 
tine  egoism  of  Parisian  society,  and  fascinated  by  the 
overpowering  forces  of  Nature  as  he  has  seen  her  in 
his  native  tropics.  So  he  comes  to  look  on  life  as  a 
struggle  between  the  soul  and  the  earth-spirit,  in  the 
body  and  in  the  world.  Thus  impressed  and  oppressed 
by  "the  magnificent  indifference"  of  the  powers  that 
sway  the  world,  he  says  of  Nature :  — 

For  him  who  knows  to  penetrate  thy  paths, 
Illusion  wraps  thee,  and  thy  surface  lies ! 
Beneath  thy  furies,  as  beneath  thy  joys, 
Thy  force  is  without  rapture,  without  rage.2 

i  The  last  strophe  of  "  Sacrifice,"  written  hut  a  few  days  before  his 
death,  shows  the  same  unconquerable  mind  as  "  Dies  Irse  "  :  — 
Mais  si  le  ciel  est  vide,  et  s'il  n'est  plus  de  dieux 
L'amere  volupte  de  souffrir  reste  encore, 
Et  je  voudrais,  le  coeur  abime  dans  ses  yeux  [i.  e.  of  beauty] 
Baigner  de  tout  mon  sang  1'autel  ou  je  1'adore. 
2  La  Ravine  de  Saint-Gilles.     The  lines  cited  are :  — 
Pour  qui  salt  p^netrer,  Nature,  dans  tes  voies, 
L'illusion  t'enserre  et  ta  surface  ment! 


314  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

His  study  of  history  casts  a  shadow  of  deeper  dis- 
couragement on  his  vision  of  life ;  but  he  finds  in  it 
the  distraction  that  Lucretius  found  in  watching  the 
sea-fight  from  the  hill,  recovering  his  serenity  in  the 
contemplation  of  far-off  suffering,  and  relief  from 
the  puzzle  of  his  own  life  in  the  cyclopean  struggles 
of  his  giant  city,  Henokia,  where  Cain  rises  from 
his  tomb  to  justify  his  rebellion  by  making  God  the 
author  of  his  crime,  and  declares  that  he  will  avenge 
himself  by  preserving  mankind  from  the  threatened 
destruction  of  the  deluge,  and  by  aiding  them  to  shake 
off  the  dominion  of  "  thy  priests,  wolves  with  ravening 
jaws,  gorged  with  fat  of  men,  and  thin  with  rage,"  until 
the  hour  shall  come  when  Cain  foresees  that  "  God  shall 
annihilate  himself  in  his  sterility."  This  "  protest,"  as 
a  French  critic  has  called  it,  "of  the  body  against  pain, 
the  heart  against  injustice,  and  reason  against  the 
unintelligible,"  has  naturally  suggested  to  many  the 
Prometheus  of  ^schylus  and  the  "  Graius  homo "  of 
Lucretius  (i.  66).  But  in  our  day  the  contradictions 
of  nature  have  become  more  acute,  its  antinomies 
more  obvious,  and  the  need  of  a  solution  urges  itself 
more  imperiously  on  the  human  heart,  as  science  en- 
larges the  borders  of  our  knowledge  and  nourishes 
our  intellectual  pride.  And  so  it  is  fitting  that  "  Cain  " 

Au  fond  de  tes  fureurs,  comme  au  fond  de  tes  joies, 
Ta  force  est  sans  ivresse  et  sans  emportement. 

(Formes  barbares,  p.  176.) 

Compare  "  La  Foret  vierge ; "  "  La  Fontaine  aux  lianes ; "  "  La 
Panthere  noire  ;  "  "  Le  Jaguar,"  parts  of  which  resemble  very  closely 
the  noted  "Lowenritt"  of  Freiligrath ;  Les  Elephants  (Barbares,  pp. 
186, 136, 198,  208,  183) ;  Midi  (Antiques,  p.  292).  In  "Effet  de  lune" 
and  "Les  Hurleurs"  (Barbares,  pp.  211,  172)  Nature  is  a  destroyer. 
Karely  she  shows  a  milder  face,  as  in  "  Claires  de  lune  "  and  "  Bernica  " 
(Barbares,  pp.  178, 205);  still  more  rarely  her  sublimity,  as  in  "  Sommeil 
du  condor"  (Barbares,  p.  193). 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   LYRIC   POETRY.  315 

should  be  elaborated  with  all  that  archaeology  and 
anthropology  have  to  teach  of  primitive  man. 

Other  poems  in  this  connection  deal  with  heathen 
and  Hellenic  legends,  and  many  of  them  show  the 
same  curious  preoccupation  with  death  that  haunted 
Gautier  and  Baudelaire.  Such  titles  as  "Dies  Irse," 
"  Solvet  Sseclum,"  "  Les  Spectres,"  "  Fiat  Nox,"  "  Mort 
du  soleil,"  "Aux  morts,"1  sufficiently  suggest  the 
nature  of  these  lugubriously  beautiful  aspirations 
toward  Nirvana.  "O  divine  Death,"  exclaims  the 
poet,  "deliver  us  from  time,  number,  space;  give  us 
back  the  repose  that  life  has  troubled."2  One  cannot 
repress  a  little  smile  of  irony  as  one  pictures  Leconte 
de  Lisle  at  his  desk  filing  these  verses,  and  living  on, 
toying  with  despair. 

From  the  primeval  man  and  Hebrew  tradition  the 
poet  turns  to  the  more  sympathetic  mysticism  of  India. 
Indeed,  impelled  perhaps  by  the  disappointment  of  his 
political  hopes  and  by  his  religious  disillusionment,  he 
has  confessed  his  attachment  to  Buddhism  and  its 
contemplative  founder,  some  part  of  whose  esoteric 
philosophy  has  passed  into  the  "Vision  de  Brahma," 
and  the  "Baghavat,"  though  "Qunacepa"  takes  us 
back  to  the  still  more  primitive  philosophy  that  it 
is  not  the  love  of  Nirvana  but  the  love  of  youth  and 
maid  that  gives  the  greatest  impulse  to  effort  and 
sacrifice. 

In  passing  from  India  to  Greece,  De  Lisle  finds 
freer  action  and  greater  beauty,  but  a  moral  horizon 

1  Antiques,  p.  309  ;  Barbares,  pp.  361,  241,  237,  240,  232. 
2  Et  toi,  divine  Mort  .  .  . 

Affranchis-nous  du  temps,  du  nombre,  de  1'espace 
Et  rends-nous  le  repos  que  la  vie  a  trouble. 

(Dies  Irae,  Antiques,  p.  311.) 


316  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

/  always  fatalistic,  bounded  by  the  grave,  and  saved 
only  from  melancholy  speculation  by  national  glory 
and  personal  activity.  So  he  paints  them  in  their 
myths  and  their  worship  of  beauty.  In  two  dramas, 
whose  stately  simplicity  suggests  and  almost  rivals 
that  of  ^Eschylus,  he  has  told  the  tales  of  Helen  and 
Orestes.  Briefer  pieces  recount  the  hapless  daring  of 
Khiron,  overbold  to  conceive  gods  better  than  the 
Olympians,  and  of  Niobe,  who  mourned  the  van- 
quished Titans.  Others  are  pure  idyls  of  beauty  sug- 
gesting Theocritus  in  all  but  his  unrivalled  naivete'.1 
But  Nature  to  him  is  always  forceful,  dominant,  over- 
coming man  and  his  works,  not  the  kindly  nurturing 
mother  of  the  classic  poets. 

From  Greece  we  are  borne  to  a  field  as  different 
from  it  as  the  Ganges.  The  Great  Migration  inspires 
pictures  of  fierce  energy  and  passion,2  and  the  weird 
mythology  of  the  Elder  Edda,  as  told  in  his  legend  of 
the  Nornes,  serves  as  the  psychological  preparation 
for  the  ascetic  teaching  of  the  early  Christian  mis- 
sionaries. Everywhere,  from  Iceland  to  the  Ganges, 
the  poet  had  found  that  reflection  led  men  to  puzzled 
dissatisfaction  with  the  course  of  the  world ;  but  no- 
where did  he  find  life  held  a  less  precious  gift  than 
by  the  race  that  produced  the  "  Bard  of  Temrah " 
and  invited  the  "  Massacre  of  Mona." 3 

Of  all  the  world-philosophies  the  mediaeval  Christian 
system  is  least  sympathetic  to  Leconte  de  Lisle,4  per- 
haps because  he  sees  in  it  what  he  thinks  a  perversion 

1  E.  g.,  Glauce,  Klytie,  La  Source  (Antiques,  pp.  75,  130,  139). 

2  E.  g.,  Le  Massacre  de  Mona,  La  Mort  de  Sigurd,  Le  Cceur  de  Hjal- 
mar  (Barbares,  pp.  113,  96,  77). 

8  Barbares,  pp.  61,  113. 

4  Cp.,  especially,  Les  Siecles  raaudits,  La  Bete  escarlate  (Tragiques, 
pp.  59,  107). 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF  LYRIC   POETRY.  317 

of  the  true  message  of  Christ.  Here,  first,  we  find  the 
purely  satiric  vein  in  "  Une  Acte  de  charite  "  (Bar- 
bares,  p.  282),  a  subject  borrowed  from  the  Rhenish 
legend  of  Bishop  Hatto,  who  burned  the  mendicants 
in  his  empty  granary,  or  in  the  "  Paraboles  de  Dom 
Guy  "  (Barbares,  p.  315),  a  sermon  of  mediaeval  directness 
on  the  seven  deadly  sins  and  their  embodiments  in  the 
age  of  the  preacher.  More  completely  objective  are 
other  poems  that  help  us  to  realize  the  crushing  weight 
on  the  mediaeval  mind  of  its  belief  in  hell.  Especially 
the  dehumanizing  religion  of  old  Spain,  where  all 
colors  are  heightened  and  all  passions  intensified,  has 
been  ruthlessly  presented  in  its  barbarity,1  while 
recently  published  fragments  of  De  Lisle's  posthumous 
"6 tats  du  diable"  show  that  the  subject  haunted  him 
still.2 

The  question  of  the  ages  finds  no  answer  in  Leconte 
de  Lisle.  To  those  who  think  they  know  the  answer 
he  has  only  a  message  of  warning ;  but  for  those  who 
can  enjoy  poetry  apart  from  its  teaching,  he  has  much 
more  than  that.  "  There  are  hours,"  says  Lemaitre, 
"  when  you  are  infamous  enough  to  find  that  Lamar- 
tine  says  '  Gnan-Gnan '  and  Hugo  '  Bourn-Bourn,'  when 
the  cries  and  apostrophes  of  De  Musset 3  seem  childish. 
Then  you  can  enjoy  Gautier ;  but  there  is  something 
better.  Never  mind  if  you  have  n't  the  great  Flaubert 
at  hand ;  even  he  has  too  much  feeling.  Just  read 

1  E.  g.,  L'Accident  de  Don  Inigo,  La  Tete  du  comte,  La  Ximena 
(Barbaras,  pp.  289,  285,  293). 

2  In  the  "  Revue  des  deux  mondes,"  1894.    They  deal  with  the  Bor- 
gias.     There  are  others  in  the  posthumously  published   "Derniers 
poemes." 

3  It  is  to  such  singers  of  their  own  woe  that  De  Lisle  addresses  the 
scathing  sonnet  "Les  Montreurs  "  (Barbares,  p.  222).     A  fine  instance 
of  impassive  force  is  "  Le  Soir  d'une  bataille"  (Barbares,  p.  230). 


318  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Leconte  de  Lisle.  For  a  moment  you  will  have  vision 
without  pain,  the  serenity  of  Olympians,  or  of  Satans 
appeased." 

In  1866  Leconte  de  Lisle  joined  with  several  younger 
poets  in  "Le  Parnasse  contemporain,"  which,  being 
followed  by  two  like  volumes  in  1869  and  1876,  gave 
to  the  group  the  name  "  Parnassians,"  by  which  was 
meant  the  school  that  prized,  above  all  else,  purity  and 
beauty  of  form.  Many  of  the  group  have  attained 
really  remarkable  excellence  in  this  kind,  though  their 
production,  as  is  usual  with  poets  of  their  type,  is 
small,  slow,  and  labored.  The  best  continuation  of 
De  Lisle's  spirit  is  in  the  Buddhistic  poetry  of  Jean 
Lahor  (Dr.  Cazalis) 1  and  the  marionette-plays  of 
Maurice  Bouchor.2  His  peculiar  artistry  was  best 
learned  by  De  Heredia,  who  perhaps  bettered  the 
instruction.8 

The  popularity  won  by  D&  Heredia  at  the  cen- 
tury's close  marked  a  revival  of  a  stricter  taste  and 
a  reaction  against  the  fantastic  license  of  the  school 
of  Baudelaire,  the  Naturalist  and  Symbolist  poets  who 
had  been  most  in  evidence  till  then,  and  to  whom  we 
shall  recur.  De  Heredia,  as  his  name  suggests,  was  a 
Spaniard,  born  in' Cuba  (1842).  Indeed  it  is  a  little 
disquieting  to  see  how  many  foreign  names  one  meets 
in  this  literary  generation,  though  any  literature  might 
be  glad  to  welcome  such  a  guest.  He  is  the  supreme 
flower  of  the  Parnassian  cultus  of  form,  most  pictu- 
resque, and  so  impersonal  that  his  verses  have  not  even 

1  L'lllusion,  1888  and,  enlarged,  1893. 

2  Tobie,    Noel,   Sainte    Ce'cile,    Mysteres    d'£leusis    (1889-1894). 
Lyric:  Les  Symboles,  1894. 

8  Cp.  Brunetiere,  Poe'sie  lyrique,  ii.  189  ;  Lemaitre,  Contemporains, 
ii.  49 ;  and  Revue  bleue,  May,  1895. 


THE  ^VOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY.      319 

\  the  vague  pessimistic  gloom  of  De  Lisle,  but  only  a 
I  sort  of  expansion  of  heart  at  heroism  and  natural 
/  beauty,  which  it  will  be  noticed  is  the  most  universal 
sentiment  we  can  conceive.  His  work,  hardly  bulkier 
than  Gray's,  shows  the  same  meticulous  polish,  and 
the  reticence  of  a  conscious  artist  who  is  never  ready 
to  lay  aside  the  literary  file.  His  sonnets  would  sug- 
gest the  "  Cameos "  of  Gautier,  save  that  he  has 
learned,  perhaps  from  Verlaine  and  his  Symbolist 
Decadents,  the  fascination  of  a  delicate  vague  sugges- 
tion of  the  subjective  that  we  miss  in  that  hierophant 
of  art  for  art. 

His  style  is  rich  and  highly  colored,  but  more  con- 
densed, plastic,  and  precise  than  that  of  any  modern 
French  poet,  unless  it  be  Sully-Prudhomme.1  His 
subjects  are  drawn  from  his  recollections  of  his  native 
Cuba,  or  out  of  the  wonderful  history  of  the  old  Span- 
ish conquistador es,  from  one  of  whom,  a  companion  of 
Cortez,  he  is  himself  descended.  The  scenes  and  tra- 
ditions of  his  youth  are  reflected  everywhere,  but  with 
them  and  in  them  appears  the  careful  literary  and 
scientific  training  of  his  student  years  at  Havana  and 
Paris. 

Out  of  this  combination  of  a  tropical  environment, 
heroic  ancestry,  cloistered  training  in  the  humanities, 
and  the  latest  results  of  modern  investigation  in  the 
precise  studies  of  the  Ecole  des  Chartes,  came  a  half- 
cento  of  sonnets,  so  compactly  built  that  every  word 
adds  at  once  to  the  imagery  and  to  the  melody.  What 
a  study,  for  instance,  in  the  marriage  of  compression 
and  sonorousness  is  this  sonnet  on  the  "  Conqudrants," 

1  The  closest  analogues  to  the  sonnets  of  "Les  Trophees  "  (1893) 
are  to  be  found  in  the  sonnets  of  Sully-Prudhomme's  "  6preuves " 
and  "  Justice." 


320  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

some  part  of  whose  beauty  may  not  have  evaporated 
even  from  this  rhymeless  but  linear  translation  : :  — 

Like  flight  of  falcons  from  their  native  quarry, 
Fatigued  with  bearing  their  proud  misery, 
From  Palas  de  Morguer  brigands  and  captains 
Sailed  drunk  with  brutal  and  heroic  dreams. 
They  went  to  win  the  metal  fabulous 
Cipango  ripens  in  its  distant  mines, 
And  steady  tropic  winds  sloped  their  lateens 
To  the  strange  borders  of  the  western  world. 
Each  evening  of  an  epic  morrow  fain, 
The  tropic  sea's  phosphoric  azure  glow 
Charmed  with  mirage  of  gold  their  slnmberings; 
Or  bent  on  prow  of  the  white  caravels 
They  watched  the  climbing  in  a  sky  unknown 
Of  new  stars  from  the  bosom  of  the  sea. 

This  whole  piece  is  a  study  in  rhetoric  and  harmony 
that  will  repay  the  most  exact  analysis,  and  the  same 
heroic  epoch  has  inspired  a  whole  group  of  sonnets  as 
well  as  several  poems  that  depart  from  this  favorite 
form  of  the  Parnassian  muse.2  Other  sonnets  are  bits 


1  Comme  un  vol  de  gerfauts  hors  du  charnier  natal, 
Fatigues  de  porter  leurs  miseres  hautaines, 
De  Pal&g  de  Morguer,  routiers  et  capitaines 
Partaient,  ivres  (Tun  reve  hero'ique  et  brutal. 
Us  allaient  conquerir  le  fabuleux  metal 
Que  Cipango  murit  dans  ses  mines  lointaines, 
Et  les  vents  alizes  iuclinaient  leurs  antennes 
Aux  bords  mysterieux  du  monde  occidental. 
Chaque  soir  esperant  des  lendemains  epiques 
L'azur  phosphorescent  de  la  mer  des  Tropiques 
Enchantait  leur  sommeil  d'un  mirage  dore  ; 
Ou  penches  a  1'avant  des  blanches  caravelles 
Ds  regardaient  monter  dans  un  ciel  ignore 
Du  fond  de  1'Ocean  des  etoiles  nouvelles. 

2  E.  g.,  "  Conquerants  d'or,"  of  which  some  lines  on  the  setting  sun 
are  deservedly  famous.  A  translation  of  Bernal  Diaz's  "  Chronicle  " 
is  a  further  witness  to  De  Heredia's  loyalty  to  ancestral  memories, 
and  his  prose  romance  "La  Nonne  Alferez"  (1894)  touches  the  pica- 
roon side  of  the  same  subject. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY.       321 

of  pure  description,  among  which  one  notes  and  admires 
the  wholly  exotic  tone  of  the  Japanese  "  Samourai," 
the  dazzling  colors  of  "Blason  celeste,"  and  the  cold 
enamelled  brilliancy  of  the  "Ke'cif  de  corail,"1  while 
there  is  even  a  breath  of  human  sympathy  in  "La 
Me'daille  antique  "  and  "  Sur  un  marbre  briseY'  and 
this  note  is  carried  also  into  the  "  Sonnets  e*pigraphes," 
where  there  is  a  touch  of  the  high-souled  melancholy 
that  befits  the  representative  of  a  race  whose  past  glories 
seem  to  contain  no  promise  for  the  future. 

In  Leconte  de  Lisle  the  muse  seemed  to  flee  our  in- 
hospitable age ;  in  De  Heredia  she  wrapped  herself  in 
splendid  imagery  and  philosophic  contemplation.  Mean- 
time a  more  genuinely  popular  note  was  struck  by 
Manuel  and  Coppee,  who  cultivated  the  field  that 
Sainte-Beuve  had  planted,  the  descriptive  poetry  of 
common  life,  and  so  made  themselves  the  poetic  rep- 
resentatives of  the  Naturalistic  School,  though  they  are 
less  thoroughgoing  in  meditating  that  thankless  muse 
than  the  vociferous  Eichepin2  or  even  than  the  oc- 
casional ventures  in  this  field  of  Maupassant  and  the 
versatile  Yerlaine.  Both  Coppe'e  and  Manuel  com- 
promised a  little  with  idealism,  approaching  perhaps 
most  nearly  to  the  model  Sainte-Beuve  had  set  up  for 
himself  in  the  "  Pense'es  de  Joseph  Delorme."  "  I 

1  The  last  six  lines  are  peculiarly  praiseworthy :  — 
De  sa  splendide  ecaille  e"teignant  les  emaux, 

Un  grand  poisson  navigue  a  travers  les  rameaux  [i.  e.  of  the  coral], 
Dans  1'onde  transparente  indolemment  il  rode ; 
Et  brusquement,  d'un  coup  de  sa  nageoire  en  feu, 
II  fait  dans  le  cristal  morne,  immobile  et  bleu, 
Courir  un  frisson  d'or,  de  nacre  et  d'e"meraude. 

2  Chansons  des  gueux,  1876;  Les  Blasphemes,  1884;  Mes  paradis, 
1894  ;  Chemineau,  1897  ;  La  Martyre,  1898  ;  Don  Quichotte,  1905.     A 
dramatic  conte  bleu,  Vers  la  joie,  1894,  and  the  novels  Flamboche,  1895, 
and  Lagebasse,  1900,  show  idealistic  and  religious  tendencies. 
21 


322  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

have  tried,"  he  said,  "to  be  original  in  iny  fashion, 
humbly,  like  a  bourgeois,  watching  closely  the  soul  and 
nature,  naming  things  of  private  life  by  their  com- 
mon names,  but  trying  to  relieve  the  prosaic  side 
of  these  humble  details  by  descriptions  of  human 
sentiments  and  natural  objects."  In  this  style  Man- 
uel 1  printed  three  collections  of  poems,  "  Pages 
intimes"  (1866),  "Pendant  la  guerre"  (1871),  and 
"Poemes  populaires"  (1871),  which  won  so  great  a 
popular  success  that  a  selection  from  them,  "  Podsies 
de  I'e'cole  et  du  foyer  "  has  been  made  for  the  use  of 
French  schools. 

This  domestic  genre  was  almost  immediately  adopted 
by  Coppe'e,2  who  called  Leconte  de  Lisle  his  master, 
though  he  seems  rather  an  original  genius  of  a  second- 
ary rank.  He  wrote  short  stories  and  many  dramas  of 
sentiment,  but  it  is  as  a  poet  that  he  must  be  studied, 
for  it  is  the  poetic  element  in  his  prose,  and  the  epic 
or  lyric  note  in  his  dramas,  that  gives  them  their 
peculiar  charm.  He  began  as  a  true  Parnassian,  an 
artist  in  verse  who  rejoiced  in  his  handiwork  and  was 
skilled  in  all  the  mysteries  of  the  craft,  though  not 

1  Born  1823.    He  published  also  a  fourth  collection  of  poems,  "  En 
voyage,"   1881,  and  several   popular  dramas.      His  profession  was 
pedagogy. 

2  Born  1842,  died  1908.     He  collaborated  in  the  "  Parnasse  contem- 
porain  "  of  1866.     His  poems  are  collected  under  the  titles  :  Le  Reli- 
quaire,  1866;  Intimites,  1868;  Poemes  moderues,  1869;  Les  Humbles, 
1872;  Le  Cahier  rouge,  1874;  Olivier,  1875;  Pendant  le  siege,  1875; 
Exilee,  1876  ;  Les  Mois,  1877 ;  Le  Naufrage,  1878 ;  Dans  la  priere  et  dans 
la  lutte,  1901.     Many  dramas  since  1869  and  prose  tales  since  1880. 
Essays:  Mon  franc  parler,  1894.    La  Bonne  souff ranee,  1898,  records 
his  penitent  return  to  the  Church. 

Criticism  :  Brunetiere  Poesie  lyrique,  ii.  189  ;  Lemaitre,  Contempo- 
rains,  i.  79  ;  France,  Vie  litte'raire,  i.  156. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY.       323 

without  some  taint  of  sentimental  tinsel  and  a  little  of 
Gautier's  indifference  to  the  moral  bearing  of  his  work. 
Typical  of  this  period  is  "  Les  Intimites,"  while  four 
years  later  "  Les  Humbles,"  beneath  their  languorous 
coquetry,  facile  suavity,  and  fleeting  grace  that  suggest 
Banville,  struck  quite  another,  a  deeper,  possibly  also 
a  higher  note.  Here,  with  studied  simplicity  and  a 
beauty  not  without  its  sternness,  he  wrote  the  lyric  .\ 
of  poverty  and  self-denial,  the  poetry  of  democracy.'^ 
We  see  a  band  of  emigrants  forced  to  leave  the  only 
land  they  know,  and  looking  to  the  future  less  with 
hope  than  with  frightened  anxiety ;  we  are  shown 
the  nurse  who  returns  from  her  city  charge  to  find 
her  own  cradle  empty,  the  son  who  toils  his  life  out 
for  his  mother,  and  the  domestic  troubles  of  a  "  petit 
dpicier."  That  CoppeVs  sympathy  for  the  "  humble  " 
was  genuine,  earlier  pieces,  such  as  "  The  Blacksmiths' 
Strike  "  and  "  Angelus,"  attest ;  but  he  lacked  sustained 
energy,  and  occasionally  fell  into  a  jesting  trivial- 
ity that  grates  on  a  sensitive  ear.  All  this  is  laid 
aside,  however,  in  "  Pendant  le  siege,"  poems  that  ring 
with  a  true  patriotism  in  defeat,  and  indignation  at 
the  Commune,  that  "  insurrection  of  instincts  without 
a  country  and  without  a  God ; "  and  these  cries  of  pain 
are  followed  by  a  little  group  of  "  Promenades  et  in- 
tdrieurs  "  which  are  perhaps  the  best  poetic  expression 
of  modern  Parisian  life. 

But  the  sobering  effect  of  1871  soon  gave  place  to  a 
gentler  vein  of  poetic  narration,  suggesting  now  the 
dryad,  now  the  faun,  and  occasionally  the  satyr.  The 
domestic  idyl  has  seldom  found  a  prettier  expression 
than  in  "  Jeunes  filles  "  and  "  Les  Mois  ;"  and  in  a  few 
later  poems,  such  as  "La  Tete  de  la  sultane  "  and  "  La 
Vieille,"  he  has  revealed  an  unsuspected  tragic  strength 


324  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

that  his  dramas  Attempt  in  vain.1  But  it  is  for  his 
stories  of  the  Pi.^jian  workman  and  lower  middle 
class  that  Coppe'e  will  be  remembered,  for  whether 
writing  in  prose  or  verse  he  is  essentially  a  story-teller. 
Indeed,  in  recent  years  he  seems  to  have  doubted 
if  poetry  were  after  all  the  fittest  vehicle  for  a  sympa- 
thetic expression  of  democratic  realism.  In  lyrics,  at 
least,  "  the  mixture  of  a  lie  doth  ever  add  pleasure," 
and  a  truly  realistic  description  of  prosaic  conditions 
will  be  more  effective  in  prose.  Hence  "Contes  ra- 
pides  "  (1888)  has  more  readers,  though  less  artistic 
value,  than  "  Les  Humbles." 

Allied  to  the  Parnassians  by  the  chastened  severity 
of  his  style,  though  gradually  separated  from  them  in 
recent  years  by  a  more  sympathetic  subjectivity,  is 
the  philosopher  among  French  poets,  Sully-Prud- 
homme, 2  who  was  born  in  Paris  in  1839,  and  began 
the  study  of  engineering,  —  an  exact  discipline  that  may 
account  for  some  qualities  in  his  poetic  work.  His 
first  essay  in  verse,  "Stances"  (1855),  won  immediate 
popularity  for  its  delicate  elegiac  sentiment,  and  con- 
vinced the  poet  of  his  calling.  Possessed  of  an  inde- 
pendent fortune  and  affected  with  a  weakness  of  the 
eyes,  he  abandoned  his  profession  and  gave  himself  up 
to  poetry,  at  first  wholly  in  the  lyric  and  elegiac  man- 
ner, polishing  trifles  with  an  amateur's  delight,  till  at 
last  his  vocation  for  serious  and  philosophic  subjects 

1  His  best  tragedies  are  "  Severe  Torelli "  and  "  Pour  la  couronne  ; " 
the  best  comedies,  "  Le  Luthier  de  Cremone  "  and  "  Le  Tresor." 

2  Les   fipreuves,    1865;   Les   Solitudes,  1869;    Les    Destins,  1872; 
Vaines  tendresses,  1875  ;  Le  Prisme,  1886;  and  two  epics,  La  Justice, 
1878;  LaBonheur,  1888;  fipaves,  1908.     Criticism:  Lemaitre,  Con- 
temporains,  i.  31  and  iv.  199  ;  France,  Vie  litteraire,  i.  156  and  ii.  36 ; 
Brunetiere,  Litterature  contemporaiue,  81,  and  Poesie  lyrique  au  xix. 
siecle. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   LYRIC   POETRY.  325 

appeared  in  his  striking  preface  to  •«  translation  of  a 
portion  of  Lucretius'  poem  on  "  Thaon'ature  of  Things  " 
(1869).  From  this  time  metaphysics  struggled  with 
poetry,  till  they  fairly  got  the  upper  hand  in  the  epics 
"  Justice "  and  "  Bonheur,"  the  best  of  the  few  long 
poems  in  modern  French  literature. 

But  from  the  first  his  poetry  had  been  thoughtful, 
aspiring  to  sound  new  depths  "  in  the  ocean  of  the 
soul,"  and  taking  for  its  field  "  all  human  history  and 
human  nature."1  While  essentially  realistic,  Sully- 
Prudhomme  was  not  so  pessimistic  as  most  of  his  fellow 
poets.  He  saw  good  in  evil,2  and  had  a  healthy  faith 
in  the  value  of  struggle  and  action.  He  felt  all  the 
baseness  that  exasperated  Baudelaire,  but  he  believed 
that  the  spur  of  pleasure  and  ambition  would  uncon- 
sciously lead  society  upward,  and  for  the  declamatory 
gloom  of  De  Musset's  "  Eolla "  he  had  only  indignant 
impatience,  basing  his  opposition  to  the  Romantic 
maladie  du  siecle  on  a  rational  positivism.3  It  is  inter- 
esting and  a  little  amusing  to  contrast  the  realistic  psy- 
chology of  love  in  "  Jeunes  Filles  "  or  in  "  Femmes," 
with  the  nebulous  sentiment  of  Lamartine  or  the  gush 
of  De  Musset.  None  has  ever  caught  so  well  as  he,  says 
Lemaitre,  the  awakening  of  love  in  a  boy,  his  thrill  at 
the  caress  of  a  young  girl,  and  later  his  manifold  and 
hidden  loves,  the  delicious1  beginnings  of  the  first  real 
passion,  the  pain  of  jealousy,  intensified  by  the  feel- 
ing that  he  is  powerless  to  add  to  the  happiness 
of  her  who  has  preferred  another.  The  style  of  this 

1  "Le  Vase  brise","  the  most  popular  and  hackneyed  of  the  "  Stances," 
is  not  characteristic  of  the  collection. 

2  E.  g.,  the  close  of  "  Amerique." 

3  Cp.  Joug,  Parole,  Dans  la  rue.     Even  the  pessimism  of  "  Ren- 
dez-vous "  and  especially  of  "  Vceu  "  is  not  without  a  sympathetic 
tone. 


326  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

work,  as  of  all  that  follow,  combines  the  precision 
of  the  Parnassians  with  something  of  the  oratori- 
cal swing  of  Hugo,  and  finds  in  the  development  of 
metaphor  and  in  the  sonnet  its  fullest  and  favorite 
expression. 

"  Les  Epreuves "  is  a  collection  of  these  sonnets, 
more  sombre  than  "  Stances  "  and  more  philosophic. 
He  groups  his  poems  under  the  heads  Love,  Doubt, 
Dream,  Action.  His  Doubts  reach  their  sharpest 
articulation  in  the  "  Cri  perdu  "  of  the  forced  laborers 
on  the  pyramids  that  "  mounts,  rises,  seeking  gods  and 
justice,  while  for  three  thousand  years  Cheops,  be- 
neath that  huge  monument,  sleeps  in  unalterable 
glory," l  but  they  find  their  most  philosophic  expres- 
sion in  such  lines  as  "God  is  not  nothing,  but  God  is 
no  one,  God  is  all," 2  or  "  Strange  truth  .  .  .  that  the 
universe,  the  all,  should  be  God,  and  not  know  it."3 
Such  thoughts  lead  him  to  self-forgetful  reflection,  to 
dreams  of  communion  with  universal  nature  from 
which  he  rises  to  the  more  hopeful  strains  of  "En 
avant,"  "Eoue,"  "Fer,"  "  Le  Monde  k  nu,"  "Les 
Te'me'raires,"  true  poems  of  this  age  of  exploration, 
invention,  and  research.  His  "  Zenith,"  a  little  later, 
is  a  noble  hymn  to  science,  grand  in  its  simple  and 
sober  imagery  as  it  tells  in  Miltonic  lines  the  advance 
of  the  human  mind,  and  closes  with  a  superb  vision  of 
aeronauts  who,  to  extend  the  bounds  of  knowledge, 

1  II  monte,  il  va,  cherchant  les  di'eux  et  la  justice, 
Et  depuis  trois  mille  ans  sous  1'enorme  batisse 
Dans  sa  gloire,  Cheops  inalterable  dort. 
8  Dieu  n'est  pas  rien,  mais  Dieu  n'est  pas  personne :  il  est  Tout. 

(Les  Dieux.) 
8  Etrange  verite'  .  .  . 
Que  TUnivers,  le  Tout,  soit  Dieu  sans  le  savoir ! 

(Scrupule.) 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF  LYRIC   POETRY.  327 

ascend  ever  higher  in  their  self-immolation  till  they 

sink  lifeless :  — 

Ye  cast  your  bodies,  a  last  weight,  to  earth, 
And  letting  fall  the  veil  of  mystery, 
Ye  finished  your  ascent  uncompanied.1 

Though,  as  a  disciple  of  Comte,  Sully-Prudhomme  must 
needs  cautiously  add  that  their  immortality  is  in  their 
work  and  example,  in  the  loving  memory  of  mankind. 

The  war  and  its  disasters,  that  roused  in  Hugo  an 
eloquent  but  false  and  sentimental  cosmopolitanism, 
filled  Sully-Prudhomme  with  a  nobler  patriotism.  "  I 
have  a  heart  for  my  country  that  overflows  her  borders  ; 
the  more  I  arn  French  the  more  I  feel  myself  human." 
If  he  is  not  yet  naturally  hopeful,  he  is  stronger  for 
the  experiences  of  1871.  The  "  Solitudes  "  of  1869  had 
been  almost  feminine  in  their  delicate  melancholy, 
a  note  that  can  be  most  readily  caught  from  these 
lines  on  boys'  first  days  at  boarding-school,  a  favorite 
declamation  piece  in  France :  — 

Leurs  blouses  sont  tres  bien  tirees, 
Leurs  pantalons  en  bon  etat, 
Leurs  chaussures  toujours  cirees, 
Us  ont  Pair  sage  et  delicat. 

Les  forts  les  appellent  des  filles, 
Et  les  malins  des  innocents  ; 
Us  sont  doux,  ils  donnent  leurs  billes, 
Us  ne  seront  pas  commerc.ants. 

Oh  !  la  lecon  qui  n'est  pas  sue, 
Le  devoir  qui  n'est  pas  fini: 
Une  reprimande  regue : 
Le  deshonneur  d'etre  puni ! 


1  Vous  les  avez  jetes,  dernier  lest,  k  la  terre 
Et,  laissant  retomber  le  voile  du  mystere 
Vous  avez  acheve  Tascension  tout  seuls. 


328  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Us  songent  qu'ils  dormaient  nagueres, 
Douillettement  ensevelis, 
Dans  les  berceaux,  et  que  les  meres 
Les  prenaient  parfois  dans  leurs  lits.  .  .  . 

(Premiere  solitude.) 

In  the  "  Vaines  tendresses  "  of  six  years  later  this 
melancholy  has  become  more  profound,  the  revelation 
of  the  sources  of  human  suffering  more  complete. 
To  the  author  of  "  Eendez-vous,"  half  poetry,  half 
music,  the  world  seems  not  more  evil  hut  more  sad, 
and  in  "  Yoeu "  the  poet,  in  a  Malthusian  mood, 
noting  how  "multitudes  increase  upon  this  plague- 
infested  earth,"  determines  for  sweet  compassion's 
sake,  to  let  his  "  best-loved  son,  who  shall  never  be 
born,  remain  in  the  nameless  realm  of  the  potential. 
Better  guarded  than  the  dead,  more  inaccessible, 
thou  shalt  not  issue  from  the  shadow  where  once 
I  slept."  l  Both  this  collection  and  "  Les  Destins " 
of  1872  end  with  verses  on  Death,  the  great 
consoler. 

The  philosophic  mind  whose  progress  has  been 
traced  in  other  collections,  is  the  warp  and  woof  of 
"  Les  Destins,"  which  grapple  with  the  fundamental 
antinomies  of  life. 

The  world  .  .  . 

Hides  a  profound  accord  of  balanced  destinies  .  .  . 
Not  small  nor  bad  it  is,  nor  great  nor  good  .  .  . 
To  thee  who  makest  each  being  serve  all  others, 
Nothing  is  good  or  bad,  but  all  is  rational. 

1  Demeure  dans  1'empire  innomme  du  possible, 
O  fils  le  plus  aime,  qui  ne  naitras  jamais. 
Mieux  sauve  que  les  morts  et  plus  inaccessible, 
Tu  ne  sortiras  pas  de  1'ombre  oil  je  dormais. 
Compare  also  the  "  Volupte  "  and  "  Souhait "  of  this  collection. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY.      329 

Measuring  never  by  my  petty  fortune 
Evil  or  good,  I  tread  my  narrow  path 
Calm,  as  an  atom  in  the  void,  and  vow 
My  humble  part  to  thy  whole  masterpiece.1 

This  brings  us  naturally  to  "  Justice  "  and  "  Bonheur," 
the  two  great  French  philosophic  poems  of  this  century. 
The  former  is  divided  into  vigils,  where  alternate  son- 
nets and  replies  of  three  quatrains  and  a  couplet  keep 
up  a  sort  of  dialogue  between  the  aspirations  of  the 
poet  in  his  search  for  Justice  and  the  cruel  mockery 
of  his  experiences.  Each  sonnet  marks  a  step  in  his 
inquiry,  which  is  conducted  in  rigid  logical  sequence. 
Among  men,  as  among  States,  the  poet  discerns  only 
selfishness,  and  Nature  has  taught  him  the  pitiless 
doctrine  of  its  struggle  for  life  and  the  survival  of  the 
fittest.  This  negative  part  of  the  work  is  more  satis- 
factory, and  possibly  more  sincere,  than  the  positive, 
wKich  seeks  the  categorical  imperative  in  the  demand 
that  each  be  accorded  its  true  worth,  so  that  from  each 
the  best  may  be  drawn  for  all.  The  poet  finds  Justice 
at  last  only  where  he  felt  it  at  first,  in  his  conscience, 
and  sacrifices  the  consistency  of  his  reasoning  to  his 
soul's  sincerity. 

In  "  Bonheur  "  also  the  heart  plays  tricks  with  the 
cobwebs  of  the  brain.  The  moral  appears  to  be  that 
we  can  imagine  no  condition  of  life  better  than  our 

1  L'univers  .  .  . 

Cache  un  accord  profond  des  Destins  balances  .  .  . 
Ni  petit  ni  mauvais,  il  n'est  ni  grand  ni  bon  .  .  . 
Pour  toi  qui  fais  servir  chaque  etre  a  tous  les  autres, 
Rien  n'est  bon  ni  mauvais,  tout  est  rationnel. 
Ne  mesurant  jamais  sur  ma  fortune  infime 
Ni  le  bien  ni  le  mal,  dans  mon  etroit  sentier 
J'irai  calme,  et  je  voue,  atome  dans  1'abime, 
Mon  humble  part  de  force,  a  ton  chef-d'osuvre  entier. 


330  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

own ;  that  the  mind,  like  a  kaleidoscope,  can  only  re- 
arrange its  sense-perceptions ;  that  we  form  our  picture 
of  heaven  by  negation  of  evil  and  elimination  of  pain. 
But  where  there  is  no  pain,  there  is  no  incitement  to 
effort,  and  existence  lacks  its  purpose  and  motive  power. 
This  thesis  the  poet  undertakes  to  prove  by  the 
experience  of  Faustus  and  Stella,  two  lovers  parted 
on  earth  and  united  in  an  extra-terrestrial  paradise, 
very  like  earth  save  that  its  inhabitants  are  vegetarians, 
delighted 

To  see  no  longer  hanging  in  the  shambles 

Corpses  laid  open, 

That  human  flesh,  nourished  by  other  flesh, 
May  nourish  some  day  worms.1 

They  live  rather  on  odors  and  flowers ;  their  joy  is 
in  harmony  of  colors,  and  in  a  love  freed  from  the 
exigencies  of  physical  existence.  No  wonder  this 
Lalla  Eookh  paradise  did  not  satisfy  Faustus,  and  he 
turned  to  the  pursuit  of  knowledge.  "A  torment 
broods  over  my  joy,"  he  says,  "  for  beneath  the  most 
charming  object  I  long  to  know  what  it  conceals." 
In  short, "  the  evil  of  the  unknown  had  already  tempted 
him."  The  exposition  that  follows  of  philosophic  sys- 
tems and  scientific  theories  is  admirable  as  a  poetic 
tour  de  force,  but  it  brings  Faustus  no  nearer  his  goal, 

till 

The  phantom  of  truth  .  .  . 

Lets  sink  unsatisfied  at  last  his  brow 

On  which  the  wing  of  doubt  beats  sure  of  prey.2 

1  Qu'il  fait  bon  ne  plus  voir  pendre  &  la  boucherie 

Les  cadavres  ouverts, 

Pour  que  1'humaine  chair  par  d'autres  chairs  nourrie 
Nourrisse  un  jour  des  vers. 

2  Le  fantome  du  vrai  .  .  . 

Laisse  enfin  retomber  son  front  inassouvi, 
Que  bat  1'aile  du  doute  assure  de  sa  proie. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF  LYRIC   POETRY.  331 

Now  first  can  the  plaint  of  mankind  that  has  been 
ever  ascending  and  filling  all  space  reach  the  ears  of 
Faustus  and  Stella.  They  lack  the  joy  of  sacrifice  to 
make  their  felicity  supreme, 

For  man  enjoys  not  long  without  remorse 
Aught  save  the  goods  he  buys  by  struggles  dear. 
True  joy  is  only  in  the  sense  of  worth.1 

From  this  moment  the  poem  breathes  a  loftier  and 
more  sympathetic  spirit.  Faustus  will  descend  to  earth 
to  teach  men  higher  wisdom,  though  he  must  suffer 
with  them.  But  long  ages  have  elapsed  since  their 
change  of  state,  and  they  find  the  human  race  vanished 
from  a  globe  now  peopled  only  by  plants  and  animals. 
Nor  will  they  repeople  it.  for  without  its  torments  life 
would  lose  its  grandeur,  a  grandeur  that  made  it  prefer- 
able to  the  blissful  existence  whence  they  came.  So 
they  leave  earth  again,  reconciled  by  their  martyrdom 
of  will  to  the  joys  of  paradise.  The  conclusion  is  a 
curious  paradox.  Life  is  sorrowful  and  sad,  but  it 
would  be  worse  if  it  were  better.  True  happiness,  it 
seems,  involves  sacrifice  and  suffering ;  and  as  Lemaitre 
has  suggested,  "Bonheur"  might  as  well  be  called 
"  Malheur." 

The  great  service  of  Sully-Prudhomme  to  French 
poetry  is  that  he  has  best  translated  into  its  language 
the  new  range  of  emotions  of  our  scientific  age.  He  is 
simple,  strong,  sincere,  possibly  even  too  conscientious 
and  too  labored  in  his  eagerness  to  unite  the  fullest 
truth  with  the  greatest  art.  "  Perhaps  no  poet,"  says 
Brunetiere,  "  ever  lived  the  life  of  his  contemporaries 

1  Car  1'homme  ne  jouit  longtemps  et  sans  remords 
Que  des  biens  cherement  payes  par  ses  efforts  .  .  . 
II  n'est  vraiment  heureux  qu'autant  qu'il  se  sent  digne. 


332  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

more  fully,  none  has  ever  translated  better  its  noblest 
unrest." 

But  beside  this  noble  unrest  there  is  an  ignoble  rest- 
lessness ;  and  this  morbid  decadent  tendency  found  an 
early  and  intense  expositor  in  Banville's  unfortunate 
friend  Charles  Baudelaire,  the  progenitor  of  the  modern 
Symbolists,  in  whom  we  find  the  poetic  expression  of  a 
state  of  weary  yet  restless  reaction  from  the  confidence 
of  scientific  determinism,  a  sort  of  literary  hyper- 
sesthesia,  rising  at  times  to  a  real  emotional  hysteria. 
It  is  from  him,  the  most  melancholy  of  the  adepts  of 
shudder  and  woe,  that  Verlaine  and  his  fellows  have 
drawn  the  solvent  poison  of  their  fascination.  It  is 
only  through  understanding  him  that  we  shall  under- 
stand them  ;  and  it  is  worth  while  to  understand  them, 
not  so  much  for  what  they  are  as  for  what  they  promise 
and  indicate. 

Baudelaire 1  was  a  Parisian,  and  two  years  the  senior 
of  Banville.  A  voyage  to  India  in  his  youth  left  a 
deep  impress  on  his  mind  that  is  reflected  in  the  imagery, 
the  colors,  and  the  odors  of  his  poetry.  His  unevent- 
ful literary  career  began  with  critical  articles  in  Parisian 
journals  that  at  the  time  attracted  little  attention,  but 
seem  now  to  show  remarkable  keenness  and  foresight, 
so  that,  as  Brunetiere  observes,  they  deserve  to  be 
"  read,  reread,  and  retained  "  (Poe'sie  lyrique  ii.  139). 
However,  the  first  of  his  works  to  exercise  strong  influ- 
ence on  his  contemporaries  was  his  translation  of  Poe's 


1  Born  1831  ;  died  1867.  Fleurs  du  mal,  1857,  and  with  a  preface 
by  Gautier,  1868;  CEuvres,  7  vols.,  1868.  Criticism:  Spronck,  Les 
Artistes  litteraires,  83;  Bourget,  Essais  de  psychologie  contempo- 
raine,  i.  3;  Lemaitre,  Contemporains,  iv.  17  j  Pellissier,  Mouvement 
litte'raire,  279 ;  Lanson,  Litterature,  1034.  See  also  Fortnightly  Re- 
view, June,  1891. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF  LYRIC   POETRY.  333 

tales  in  1856.  This  was  followed  in  the  next  year  by 
a  volume  of  poems  under  the  strange  title  "  Flowers  of 
Evil,"  six  of  which  were  such  rank  blossoms  as  to  be 
condemned  by  the  squeamish  censors  of  the  Second 
Empire.  But  not  even  this  advertisement  aroused  any 
general  interest  in  the  book  during  the  lifetime  of  the 
author.  Indeed  the  tide  did  not  turn  till  after  the 
German  war ;  but  it  has  since  set  so  steadily  that  work 
which  he  himself  would  probably  have  rejected  has 
been  gathered  into  a  posthumous  volume  (1887). 

The  important  place  that  is  now  accorded  to  these 
"  Flowers  of  Evil "  is  partly  due  to  their  anticipation 
of  a  morbid  pessimism,  more  common  now  than  in  his 
day,  and  partly  no  doubt  to  the  warm  appreciation  with 
which  G-autier  returned  the  dedication  to  him  of  the 
"  Fleurs  du  mal "  as  to  "  the  impeccable  poet "  in  a  long 
essay  prefixed  to  the  edition  of  1868.  This  appreciation 
was  however  too  tardy  to  bring  any  balm  to  Baudelaire's 
perturbed  spirit,  for  he  had  already  died  in  a  hospital 
after  a  year  of  semi-lunacy,  induced,  at  least  in  part, 
by  the  excessive  use  of  nervous  stimulants.  Perhaps 
this  was  the  end  that  he  would  have  desired,  for  he 
tells  us  that  "  he  cultivated  hysteria  with  delight  and 
terror." 

|  To  Baudelaire  nature  seems  evil,  and  so  all  that  is 
kiatural  becomes  hateful.  If,  like  Gautier,  he  is  haunted 
/by  visions  of  death,  he  does  not  shrink  from  them. 
Eather  does  he  take  a  mournful  pleasure  in  sensations 
of  decay  and  corruption,  believing,  like  that  old  nihilist 
Mephistopheles,  that  all  is  worthy  of  perishing.  How  far 
this  pessimism  is  sincere,  how  far  it  is  perverse,  is  hard 
to  determine.  Certainly  in  his  expression  of  it  there 
is  much  that  is  forced  and  intentionally  brutal,  together 
with  passages  of  curious  idealism,  that  seem  like  the 


334  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

lees  of  the  Eomantic  wine,  "  the  last  convulsion  of  ex- 
piring individualism."     "  Oh  death,"  he  exclaims, 

"  Pour  out  thy  poison  that  it  may  comfort  us  ! 
We  wish,  so  much  this  tire  bums  our  brains, 
To  plunge  to  the  gulf's  bottom,  heaven,  hell,  what  reck  we  ? 
To  the  bottom  of  the  unknown  to  find  the  new."  * 

Baudelaire  clothes  his  weird  subjects  in  a  form  more 
restrained  and  within  its  own  limits  almost  as  masterly 
as  Hugo's.  He  sought  his  vocabulary  largely  in  the 
Latin  poets  of  the  decadence,  and  defended  his  choice 
with  his  wonted  perversity,  as  "  singularly  fitted  to  ex- 
press passion  such  as  the  modern  world  understood  and 
felt."  "If  his  bouquet  is  composed  of  strange  flow- 
ers, metallic  colors,  and  heady  perfumes  ...  he  can 
reply  that  hardly  any  others  grow  in  this  black  soil, 
saturated  with  the  decay  of  corruption,  like  the  ceme- 
tery sod  of  decrepit  civilizations  in  which  are  dissolv- 
ing amid  mephitic  miasmas  the  corpses  of  foregone 
centuries."  2 

The  first  "Flower"  in  Baudelaire's  garden  gives  the 
reader  fair  warning,  for  it  assures  us  that  we  are  all 
"  hypocritical  slaves  "  of  ennui  "  most  ugly,  fierce,  un- 
clean in  the  infamous  menagerie  of  our  vices."  This 
thought  he  develops  in  the  one  hundred  and  seven 
poems  of  "  Spleen  and  Ideal,"  where  shuddering  at  the 

i  O  Mort  .  .  . 

Verse-nous  ton  poison  pour  qu'il  nous  reconforte  ! 

Nous  voulons,  tant  ce  feu  nous  brule  le  cerveau, 

Plouger  au  fond  du  gouffre,  Enfer  ou  Ciel,  qu'importe  ? 

Au  fond  de  1'Inconnu  pour  trouver  du  noitve.au. 

(Page  351,  edition  of  1892,  from  which  all  paged  citations  are  hereafter 
made.)     Cp.  also  his  Poem  in  Prose,  "  N'importe  ou  hors  du  monde," 
and  in  the  "  Fleurs,"  numbers  Ixxviii.-lxxx.,  xc.,  cli.  8. 
2  Gautier,  Preface  (freely  translated). 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY.       335 

vileness  of  life  alternates  with  aspirations  for  a  serene 
emancipation  from  it  that  the  poet  has  not  the  strength 
of  will  to  attain.  Throughout,  the  imagery  is  less  of 
the  eye  than  of  touch  and  odors.  There  is  an  East- 
Indian  sensitiveness  to  perfumes.  Some  seem  to  him 
fresh,  some  green  as  nature,  some  proud,  some  fierce, 
some  purifying.  Again  and  again  he  recurs  to  their 
intoxicating  fascination,  which  they  share  with  cats,  to 
whom  are  especially  dedicated  three  poems  (pp.  135, 
161,  189)  which  it  is  curious  to  compare  with  Taine's 
sonnet  to  his  favorite  cat,  —  a  type,  says  Mr.  Monod, 
of  his  own  softened,  reasonable  stoicism.  Baudelaire's 
intense  imagination  pictures  these  disdainers  of  their 
masters  as  they  haunt  the  darkness  with  their  phos- 
phorescent eyes  and  electric  skins,  and  he  finds  a  charm 
in  their  silent  movements  and  their  mysterious  treach- 
ery. Indeed,  as  Gautier  wittily  observes,  "  Baudelaire 
himself  was  a  voluptuous  cat,  with  velvety  ways  and 
mysterious  manner,  delicate,  caressing,  supple,  strong, 
fixing  on  things  and  men  a  gaze  of  disquieting  bright- 
ness, free,  wilful,  difficult  to  restrain,  but  without  per- 
fidy and  faithfully  attached  to  those  to  whom  he  had 
once  offered  his  sympathy."  Baudelaire's  tabbies  are 
worthy  companions  of  Gray's  "  pensive  Selima."  But 
it  must  be  admitted  that  his  women  are  less  pleasing. 
True  "  flowers  of  evil,"  all  are  corrupt,  insatiable,  incapa- 
ble of  love,  instruments  of  degradation  and  torture,  — 
all  save  the  unattainable  Beatrix  of  his  poet's  vision.1 

1  Perhaps  the  most  noted  pieces  in  "  Spleen  et  ide'al "  are :  "  Be'ne- 
diction,"  a  morbid  picture  of  the  torture  of  his  poet's  life ;  "  La  Vie 
anterieure,"  a  vision  of  Indian  serenity,  wealth,  and  perfume  that  can- 
not still  his  languishing  secret  grief ;  "  Don  Juan  aux  enfers,"  impassive 
and  impenitent ;  and  "  Une  Charogne,"  whose  ghastly  subject,  a  putre- 
fying corpse,  has  maintained  for  forty  years  its  bad  eminence  as  the 
most  horrible  poem  in  the  language. 


336  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Many  of  these  poems  are  strong,  and  some  are  beau- 
tiful ;  but  their  beauty  is  awful,  grewsome,  satanic. 
Less  forced  is  the  pessimism  of  his  "Parisian  Pic- 
tures," several  of  which  are  in  lighter  and  more  sympa- 
thetic vein,  and  some  mere  airy  fantasies.  Of  them 
all,  perhaps  that  which  clings  most  to  the  mind  is 
"  Les  Petites  vieilles,"  the  wretched  wrecks  of  a  youth 
too  gay,  who  bear  with  them  always  some  pathetic 
token  of  the  primrose  path  on  their  stony  descent 
to  the  grave.  Five  poems  on  wine  that  follow  bring 
us  back  to  a  morose  ferocity,  that  rises  to  delirious 
intensity  in  "  Le  Vin  de  1'assassin,"  the  inebriate  mur- 
derer who  rejoices  that  his  wife  is  dead  because  now 
he  can  drink  his  fill  without  being  racked  by  her 
reproachful  cries.1  Noteworthy  among  later  poems  is 
the  Dantesque  imagery  of  "Femmes  damne'es"  and 
the  melancholy  ferocity  of  "  Les  Deux  bonnes  soeurs," 
debauchery  and  death,  "  whose  ever  virgin  flanks, 
draped  in  rags,  travail  in  eternal  fruitlessness."  2  But 
perhaps  the  climax  of  the  whole  is  reached  in  his 
"Kevolt,"  where  beneath  this  demoniacal  galling  the 
poet  becomes  so  possessed  by  the  spirit  of  evil  as  to 
conceive  the  heritage  of  Satan  to  be  the  noblest  aspira- 
tion of  the  human  soul. '  A  few  lines  may  not  be 
without  interest  as  illustrations  of  this  curious  mental 
aberration :  — 

Verily,  as  for  me  I  will  leave  content 
A  world  where  deed  is  not  sister  of  thought. 
May  I  use  the  sword  and  perish  by  the  sword. 
Saint  Peter  denied  Jesus  ...  He  did  well. 

1  Ma  femme  est  morte,  je  suis  libre ; 
Je  puis  done  boire  tout  mon  soul. 
Lorsque  je  rentrais  sans  un  sou 
Ses  cris  me  dechiraient  la  fibre. 
2  Dont  le  flanc  toujours  vierge  et  drape  de  guenilles 
Sous  1'eternel  labeur  n'a  jamais  eiifante. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY.       337 

Again  he  bids  "  the  race  of  Cain  ascend  to  heaven 
and  cast  God  down  to  earth,"  and  finally  closes  his 
satanic  and  superb  "  Litany  to  Satan "  with  these 
words :  — 

Glory  and  praise  to  thee,  O  Satan,  in  the  highest 
Heaven  where  once  thou  reignedst  and  in  the  depths 
Of  hell  where  vanquished  thou  in  silence  dream'st. 
Beneath  the  tree  of  knowledge  let  my  soul 
Repose  by  thee  that  day  when  o'er  thy  brow 
Like  a  new  house  of  God  its  branches  shall  extend,1 

This  is  an  obvious  climax ;  and  with  a  short  epilogue 
of  Death,  where  "from  top  to  bottom  of  the  fatal 
ladder "  the  poet  discerns  only  "  the  weary  spectacle 
of  immortal  sin,"  2  the  "  Fleurs  du  mal "  come  to  their 
wild  end. 

These  one  hundred  and  fifty-one  poems  are  short, 
compactly  built,  and  carefully  polished  in  their  labori- 
ous moral  paradoxes,  like  fungus  growths  or  noxious 
bacilli,  that  find  in  this  rich  brain  their  natural  nidus 
and  full  nourishment.  His  prose  works  furnish  an 

1  Certes,  je  sortirai,  quant  a  moi,  satisfait 

D'un  monde  ou  1'action  n'est  pas  la  soeur  du  reve, 
Puisse-je  user  du  glaive  et  perir  par  le  glaive  : 
Saint  Pierre  a  renie  Jesus  .  .  .  il  a  bien  fait ! 

Race  de  Cain  au  ciel  monte 
Et  sur  la  terre  jette  Dieu 

Gloire  et  louange  a  toi,  Satan,  dans  les  hauteurs 

Du  Ciel  ou  tu  regnas,  et  dans  les  profondeurs 

De  1'Enfer,  ou,  vaincu,  tu  reves  en  silence  ! 

Fais  que  mon  ame  un  jour,  sous  1'Arbre  de  Science 

Pres  de  toi  se  repose,  a  1'heure,  ou  sur  ton  front 

Comme  un  Temple  nouveau  ses  rameaux  s'epandront. 

2  Du  haut  jusques  en  bas  de  1'echelle  fatale 
Le  spectacle  ennuyeux  de  l'immortel  peche. 

22 


338  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

herbarium  of  equally  startling  exotic  flowers,  and  give 
a  clew  to  the  botany  of  this  literary  genus.  In  his 
"  Fuse'es  "  we  may  read  that  the  supreme  and  unique 
joy  of  love  lies  in  the  certainty  of  doing  injury.  "  All 
joy  is  based  on  evil,"  a  topsy-turvy  notion  by  no  means 
original  with  Baudelaire,  for  it  had  been  preached  with 
equal  perversity  some  decades  before  he  was  born  by 
the  Marquis  de  Sade.1  In  this  spirit  he  defines  a 
young  girl  as  the  being  that  "  unites  the  greatest 
imbecility  to  the  greatest  depravity,"  and  thinks  the 
very  worst  charge  against  woman  to  be  that  "  she  is 
natural,  that  is  to  say,  abominable."  After  this  one  is 
prepared  for  his  avowal:  "It  has  always  seemed  to 
me  horrible  to  be  a  useful  man." 

All  this  is  not  only  the  contradiction  of  common 
sentiment  but  of  common  sense.  Yet,  though  Baude- 
laire himself  warns  us  that  "  a  little  of  the  charlatan 
is  always  permissible  to  genius,"  he  seems  to  have 
schooled  himself  into  a  certain  sincerity  of  self-contra- 
diction, worshipping  Satan  while  he  clung  to  Catholi- 
cism, and  becoming  toward  the  close  of  his  life  morosely 
ascetic  in  resolution  and  extravagantly  hedonistic  in 
|  action.  He  united  three  discordant  elements,  —  the 
philosophy  of  science,  the  ethics  of  materialism,  and 
the  mysticism,  though  not  the  faith,  of  mediaeval 
demonology ;  that  is  to  say,  in  his  theory  and  in  his 
practice  he  was  a  decadent,  one  who  put  his  new  wine 
into  an  old  bottle,  a  man  out  of  place  in  his  social 
environment,  and  so  tending,  as  science  tells  us  that 
all  misplaced  organic  matter  does,  to  disintegration.2 

1  The  curious  may  consult  Jules  Blais,  Satanisrae  (1895),  with  a 
preface  by  the  novelist  Huysmans,  and  Bois,  Les  Petites  religions  de 
Paris  (1894). 

2  Cp.  Bourget,  1.  c.  24,  for  a  discussion  of  the  philosophy  of  deca- 
dence. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY.      339 

This  contradiction  in  the  poet's  mind  is  reflected  in 
his  work.  The  new  and  the  old,  Komanticism  and 
Naturalism,  dwell  in  him  side  by  side,  —  spiritual  ideals 
with  putrefying  corpses,  the  most  diseased  sensuality 
with  the  most  exalted  asceticism,  or,  in  his  own  words, 
"  ecstasy  of  life  and  disgust  of  life."  He  hates  woman 
with  a  mystic  mediaeval  hatred,  and  in  spite  of  this, 
or  because  of  it,  he  unites  a  passionate  cult  to  his  bit- 
ter contempt,  as  though  he  were  trying  to  realize  that 
complete  debauchery  of  the  will  which  reasons  that 
since  what  is  natural  is  evil,  what  is  artificial  must 
be  virtuous  and  good.  But  this  is  pessimism  reduced 
to  the  absurd,  just  as  the  same  doctrine  in  aesthetics 
is  the  reduction  to  the  absurd  of  art. 

This  state  of  mind  has  long  ceased  to  be  exceptional. 
Deep  discontent  with  the  social  order,  if  not  with  the 
moral  order,  of  the  world  is  almost  a  sign  of  the  times. 
In  politics  it  shows  itself  in  nihilistic,  anarchic,  and 
socialistic  dreams ;  Schopenhauer's  popularity  reflects 
it  in  philosophy,  while  in  literature  Hardy  in  England, 
Sudermann  in  Germany,  and  Maupassant  in  France 
typify  a  moral  unrest.  But  this  is  as  much  as  to 
say  that  Baudelaire's  aesthetics  are  a  house  built  on 
sand,  that  his  efforts  and  those  of  his  followers  are 
foredoomed  to  an  impotent  and  lame  conclusion. 
There  can  be  no  lasting  fame  for  decadence.  And 
yet  the  work  of  this  forerunner  has  an  exquisitely 
poisonous  originality  that  preserves  his  memory  as  in 
arsenic  green.  Who  before  him  ever  sang  with  such  per- 
verse genius  that  health  was  disgusting,  that  enamel 
and  rice  powder  were  lovelier  than  red  cheeks,  that 
the  odors  of  the  laboratory  were  purer  than  those  of 
the  garden,  and  that  no  hues  of  life  were  so  fair  as 
those  of  phosphorescent  decay  ?  Madame  de  Stael,  for 


340  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

all  her  theory  of  progress,  hesitated  to  prefer  Latin 
literature  to  Greek,  but  Baudelaire  did  not  shrink  from 
proclaiming  that  Petronius  was  superior  to  Virgil. 
He  would  have  for  his  muse  "  no  matron  repulsive  in 
her  healthy  virtue."  Artificiality,  formal  elaboration, 
"  the  absolute  expression,"  the  union  of  harmony  and 
melody,  of  form  and  tone,  was  his  Sisyphean  ambition, 
as  it  had  been  that  of  Banville,  whom  in  his  minor 
key  Baudelaire  equalled  and  perhaps  surpassed.  It  is 
said  that  he  carried  this  endeavor  even  into  the  modu- 
lations of  his  conversation,  rejoicing  in  the  music  of 
his  own  voice.1  This  instinct  enabled  him  to  antici- 
pate the  long-contested  verdict  of  the  Wagnerian  music- 
drama,  so  that  even  before  that  composer  had  obtained 
a  sympathetic  hearing  in  his  native  G-ermany,  Paris 
had  listened  incredulously  to  the  enthusiastic  appre- 
ciation of  this  father  of  the  Decadents.  Baudelaire, 
however,  did  not  interpret  Wagner  to  his  countrymen  as 
marking  a  normal,  though  a  long  step  in  musical  evo- 
lution. His  attraction  was  for  the  eccentric  aspects  of 
that  great  composer's  genius,  which  still  remains  to  a 
degree  unappreciated  in  France. 

Baudelaire's  genius  is  unhealthy,  and  unfortunately 
disease  is  more  contagious  than  health.  The  robust 
sentiment  of  Hugo  finds  but  a  faint  echo  on  Parnas- 
sus, while  from  the  putrescent  hot-bed  of  the  "Fleurs 
du  mal"  there  has  sprung  a  rank  and  pestiferous 
growth  of  poison  plants  that  shed  the  winged  seeds  of 
literary  disorganization  and  morbid  psychology  over 

1  His  reading  aloud  of  poetry  seems  to  have  produced  a  very  deep 
impression  on  the  finest  minds  of  his  generation,  among  them  Stend- 
hal, Gautier,  Hugo,  Flaubert,  Banville,  Leconte  de  Lisle,  and  Dela- 
croix, to  whom  Baudelaire  was  most  loyal  in  friendship  and  generous 
in  critical  appreciation. 


THE  ^VOLUTION  OF  LYEIC  POETRY.      341 

the  poetry  of  the  next  generation.  These  noxious 
germs  were  powerfully  aided  in  their  development  by 
some  foreign  results  of  similar  causes.  The  Eussian 
novelists,  the  English  painters,  the  German  composers 
have  combined  to  undermine  the  power  of  the  clear 
scientific  spirit  of  Taine,  and  to  cultivate  in  enervated 
minds  the  diathesis  of  indefinite  mysticism  that  finds 
its  present  expression  in  the  Symbolists. 

Determinist  philosophy  and  analytical  science,  that 
for  a  time  held  high  carnival  and  undisputed  sway  in 
French  fiction,  and  obtained  a  more  sober  recognition 
in  the  drama,  won  foothold  in  the  lyric  poetry  of  the 
Parnassians  only  by  compromise.  And  so  it  was  nat- 
ural that  the  reaction  against  the  positivist,  scientific 
spirit  should  manifest  itself  here  first  and  most 
strongly.  Sjmbc;lis.mv  stripped  .of  its  antic  garb,  is  an 
effort  to  re-establish  the.  place  of  metaphysical  thought 
in  poetry.  It  has  been  usually  a  misdirected  effort; 
but  though  the  attempt  has  failed,  it  has  its  eternal 
justification  in  the  unsolvable  mystery  of  nature.  In- 
deed a  certain  symbolism  is  consistent  with,  or  perhaps 
one  should  rather  say,  inherent  in,  complete  natural- 
ism. For,  as  Brunetiere  happily  puts  it,  the  Symbolists 
have  no  other  origin  than  the  profoundly  human  need 
of  making  abstractions  cognizable  by  materializing 
them,  and  no  other  excuse  for  being  than  to  manifest 
physically  to  all  what  is  spiritually  accessible  only  to 
few.  Thus  Symbolism  becQmfis,_.metaphysics  mani- 
and  made  sensible  to  the  heart.  But 


one  of  the  conditions  of  a  true  symbol  is  that  it  shall 
be  clear,  and  that  the  work  of  the  Symbolists  obviously 
is  not.  Hence  it  is  what  this  school  indicates  and 
what  it  promises  rather  than  what  it  realizes,  that 
gives  interest  to  the  somewhat  incoherent  utterances 


342  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

of  these  the  most  direct  descendants  in  the  poetic  fam- 
ily of  Baudelaire.  For  in  times  past  these  are  the 
conditions  that  have  preceded  poetic  revivals.1  But 
if  from  this  point  of  view  all  these  vagrants  of  genius 
have  their  attraction,  one  only  had  the  divine  breath  of 
which  Horace  speaks,  and  he  was  the  greatest  vagrant 
of  them  all,  the  discharged  prisoner  and  social  outcast, 
Paul  Verlaine. 

The  resemblance  of  this  true  poet  to  Baudelaire  is 
less  like  to  like  than  like  in  difference.  It  has  indeed 
been  said  that  Baudelaire  invented  a  new  shudder  and 
Verlaine  a  new  woe,  but  personally  there  is  a  closer 
parallel  between  Verlaine  and  Villon,  for  both  were 
Bohemians  by  preference  rather  than  by  necessity,  and 
both  cultivated  eccentricity  in  their  lives  and  in  their 
verses.  This  interest  in  form  for  its  own  sake  allies 
Verlaine  also  to  the  Parnassians  ;  but  from  that  com- 
pany his  spirit,  that  brooked  no  rule,  soon  parted. 
Before  the  German  war  he  had  published  three  col- 
lections of  verse ;  then  for  eleven  years  he  vanished 
from  the  surface  of  society,  but  reappeared  in  1881 
with  "  Sagesse,"  after  which  he  led  a  vagabond  life 
between  workhouses,  cafe's,  and  hospices,  publishing 
frequent  volumes  of  verse  and  occasional  articles  in 
the  critical  reviews  until  his  death,  in  January,  1896.2 

The  first  verses  of  Verlaine  suggest  the  somewhat 

1  Brunetiere,  Poesie    lyrique,    ii.   229,  and    Litterature    contem- 
poraine,  155. 

2  The  chronology  of  the  chief  volumes  of  Verlaine  is:  Poemes 
saturnines,  1867;  La  Fete  galante,  1868;  La  Bonne  chanson,  1870; 
Sagesse,  1881;  Jadis   et   naguere,    1883;   Parallelement,    1885;   Mes 
hopitaux,  1891.     A  convenient  anthology  of  his  poetry  is  contained  in 
Choix  de  poesies  de  Paul  Verlaine  (Charpentier,  1892). 

Criticism :  Lemaitre,  Contemporains,  iv.  60 ;  Brunetiere,  ii.  243  ; 
Fortnightly  Review,  March,  1891  (DeliUe). 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY.      343 

earlier  poems  of  Baudelaire  and  Leconte  de  Lisle,  and 
betray  also  the  influence  of  Edgar  Poe.  Already  in 
"  La  Fete  galante  "  one  finds  traces  of  that  delight  in 
phraseology,  in  the  concord  of  sweet  sounds,  that  grew 
on  him  through  each  succeeding  volume,  until  far  from 
"  chiselling  words  like  cups,"  as  he  said  and  supposed, 
he  came  to  rely  more  and  more  for  his  effects  on 
sonorousness,  sentiment,  and  a  mysterious  obscurity 
that  resists  exact  analysis  and  quite  defies  translation, 
which  may  indeed  indicate  the  mental  state  of  the 
writer  but  can  give  no  idea  of  his  instinct  for  melody. 
To  take  but  a  single  instance  from  his  first  collection, 
the  "  Poemes  saturnines."  One  need  only  read  aloud 
this  "Chanson  d'automne  "  to  feel  its  exquisite  melody  : 

Les  sanglots  longs 
Des  violons 

De  I'automne 
Blessent  mon  cceur 
D'une  langueur     . 

Monotone. 

Tout  suffocant 
Et  blerae,  quand 

Sonne  1'heure, 
Je  me  souviens 
Des  jours  anciens 
Et  je  pleura. 

Et  je  m'en  vais 
Au  vent  mauvais 

Qui  m'emporte 
Dega  dela, 
Pareil  a  la 

Feuille  morte. 

But    if  we   translate   this,  we   shall   see    how    far 
its  charm  is  independent  of  its  thought.     Take  away 


344  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

timbre  and  rhyme  and  there  is  not  much  reason  left 
in  "  The  long  sobs  of  the  violins  of  autumn  wound 
my  heart  with  a  monotonous  languor.  Suffocating  and 
pale  when  sounds  the  hour,  I  remember  ancient  days 
and  I  weep,  and  I  am  borne  along  on  the  cruel  wind 
that  carries  me  hither  and  thither  like  a  dead  leaf." 
So  too  this  picture  of  Paris  is  exquisite  to  the  ear  but 
mere  midsummer  madness  to  the  logical  mind :  — 

La  lime  plaquait  ses  teintes  de  zinc 

Par  angles  obtus ; 

Des  bouts  de  fumee  en  forme  de  cinq 
Sortaient  drus  et  noirs  des  hauts  toits  pointus. 

Moi  j'allais  re van t  du  divin  Platon 

Et  de  Phidias 

Et  de  Salamine  et  de  Marathon 
Sous  1'oeil  clignotant  des  bleus  bees  de  gaz. 

Who  ever  noticed  as  he  walked  at  night  in  a  Paris 
street  the  shape  of  the  smoke  wreaths  from  the  then 
probably  invisible  chimney-pots  ?  Who  ever  noticed 
bright  moonlight  shadows  on  a  flaringly  lighted  city 
sidewalk  ?  And  why,  finally,  should  Verlaine  or  any- 
body else  dream  of  Plato  and  Phidias  and  Salamis  and 
Marathon  on  a  crowded  Parisian  boulevard,  unless  in- 
deed he  be  a  mental  degenerate  ? 

And  yet  the  eye  may  grow  impatient  of  images 
that  it  cannot  see,  and  the  mind  of  phantom  thoughts 
that  elude  its  grasp,  but  the  man  who  has  music  in  his 
soul  will  be  won  back  ever  again  by  the  indefinable 
charm  of  this  faun-like  genius.  There  are,  however,  de- 
grees in  his  eccentricity,  and  he  who  is  not  to  the 
manner  born  will  find  "  La  Fete  galante  "  and  "  La 
Bonne  chanson"  the  most  accessible  of  Verlaine's 
volumes.  It  is  true  that  these  delicate  little  trifles 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   LYRIC    POETRY.  345 

savor  sometimes  of  that  intertwining  of  sentiment  and 
sensuousness  that  characterized  the  poetry  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  but  they  are  full  of  the  loveliness 
of  a  studied  artificiality,  much  of  the  charm  of  which 
depends  on  the  literary  culture  of  the  reader.  To 
catch  the  grace  of  "  L'Alle'e  "  or  of  "  Columbine,"  one 
must  know  a  little  of  Parny  and  much  of  Watteau, 
for  the  former  poem  is  a  Dresden  shepherdess  infin  de 
siecle  alexandrines  and  the  latter  is  her  joyous  com- 
panion in  a  song  measure  that  might  have  charmed 
Banville  himself.  The  love  ditties  of  "La  Bonne 
chanson  "  are  simpler,  and  so  have  a  more  perennial 
attractiveness.  Some  of  these  little  songs  sing  them- 
selves so  to  the  heart  that  it  seems  a  sort  of  lit- 
erary sacrilege  to  attempt  to  translate  them  into 
prose  or  limping  verses.  But  does  not  this  speak 
for  itself?  — 

La  lime  blanche 
Luit  clans  les  bois  ; 
De  chaque  branche 
Part  line  voix 
Sous  la  ramee  .  .  . 
Oh  bien  aimee. 

L'etang  reflete 

Profond  miroir 

La  silhouette 

Du  saule  noir 

Ou  le  vent  pleure  .  .  . 

Revons :  c'est  1'heure. 

Un  vaste  et  tendre 
Apaisement 
Semble  deacendre 
Du  firmament 
Que  1'astre  irise  .  .  . 
C'est  1'heure  exquise. 


346  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

The  years  that  separated  "  La  Bonne  chanson " 
from  "  Sagesse "  intensified  both  the  strength  and 
the  weakness  of  Verlaine's  character.  The  contradic- 
tions of  his  nature  became  even  more  startling  than 
those  of  Baudelaire.  Here  the  poet  of  "La  Fete 
galante"  and  the  future  author  of  "  Parallelement " 
proclaimed  with  agonized  sincerity  and  the  most 
intensely  Catholic  devotion  that  the  Jesuits  were  the 
hope  of  social  morals,  and  that  Moses  was  the  only 
scientist.  Even  the  good  old  times  when  "Main- 
tenon  cast  on  raptured  France  the  shadow  and  the 
peace  of  her  linen  caps "  are  hardly  orthodox  enough 
for  the  convert's  enthusiasm,  and  he  prefers  to  those 
halcyon  days  of  Gallicism  the  middle  ages  with  "  their 
high  theology  and  firm  morals  "  1  In  these  verses  his 
exalted  faith  holds  converse  with  God  and  Christ  as 
none  since  Thomas  a  Kempis  has  done,  and  hymns 
the  glories  of  Mary  in  verses  unsurpassed  in  French. 
Penitence  has  rarely  reached  a  more  intense  lyric 
expression  than  in  that  series  of  sonnets  where  God 
and  the  sinner  reason  together  in  verses  that  have 
been  called  by  a  great  modern  critic  "  the  first  in 
French  poetry  that  express  truly  the  love  of  God." 
Yet  these  are  equalled,  and  in  a  way  excelled,  by  an 
exquisite  hymn  to  the  Virgin  and  other  poems  that 
reach  the  extreme  intensity  of  self-renunciation.2  But 

1  C'est  vers  le  Moyen  Age  enorrae  et  delicat, 
Qu'il  faudrait  que  mon  coeur  en  panne  navigat. 

Haute  the'ologie  et  solide  morale 
Guide  par  la  folie  unique  de  la  Croix. 

(From  "  Non.  II  fut  gallican,"  but  compare  "  Sagesse  d'un  Louis 
Racine.") . 

2  The  sonnets  begin  "  Mon  Dieu  m'a  dit ; "  tbe  hymn  to  Mary, 
"  Je  ne  veux  plus  aimer."  Cp.  also,  "  O  mon  Dieu,  vous  m'avez  blesse 
d'amour."  All  these  are  in  the  "  Choix  de  poe'sies,"  pp.  159-190. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY.      347 

even  in  Verlaine's  "  Sagesse  "  there  are  pieces  as  hard 
to  set  in  order  as  a  Chinese  puzzle,1  for  Catholicism 
had  not  weaned  him  from  the  idolatry  of  words,  and 
he  was  presently  to  show  in  his  pitifully  curious 
"  Parallelement "  that  it  had  not  weaned  him  any 
more  than  the  same  Catholic  aspirations  had  done 
Baudelaire,  from  an  attempt  to  combine  the  worship 
of  God  with  that  of  the  flesh,  in  what  is  indeed  a 
melancholy  parallel. 

The  poetry  that  follows  "Sagesse"  grows  steadily 
more  incoherent  and  uneven,  so  that  it  is  impossible  to 
speak  of  progress  or  retrogression  from  volume  to  vol- 
ume, while  in  each  there  are  striking  groups  and  single 
poems.  Perhaps  his  strongest  recent  work  was  in 
political  and  social  satire.  In  a,  ballad  dedicated  to 
Luise  Michel  he  denned  the  Republican  leaders  as  '  'per- 
verted talent,  megatherium  or  bacillus,  raw  soldier, 
insolent  shyster  (robin),  or  some  brittle  compromise, 
giant  of  mud  with  feet  of  clay."  2  But  if  the  govern- 
ment delights  him  not,  neither  does  Paris,  that  "glaring 
pile  of  white  stones,  where  the  sun  rages  as  in  a  con- 
quered country.  All  vices,  the  exquisite  and  the  hide- 
ous, have  their  lair  in  this  desert  of  white  stones."  3 
Some  of  the  realistic  pictures  of  tavern  and  street  in  the 

1  E.  g.,    "  L'Espoir  luit  comme  un  brin  de  paille  dans  1'etable," 
which  is  ingeniously  unravelled  by  Lemaitre,  1.  c.  99. 
2  Gouvernements  de  maltalent, 
Megatherium  ou  bacille, 
Soldat  brut,  robin  insolent, 
Ou  quelque  compromise  fragile, 
Geant  de  boue  aux  pieds  d'argile. 

8  La  "  grande  ville."    Un  tas  criard  de  pierres  blanches 
Ou  rage  le  soleil  comme  en  pays  conquis. 
Tous  les  vices  ont  leur  taniere,  les  exquis 
Et  les  hideux,  dans  ce  desert  de  pierres  blanches. 


348  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

workmen's  wards  are  gems  in  their  way,  though  their 
brilliancy  is  more  that  of  the  cat's  eye  or  the  moonstone 
than  that  of  the  diamond  or  the  emerald.  Here  is  a 
single  example  among  many : ]  — 

The  noise  of  the  wineshop,  the  mud  of  the  walk, 
Sickly  trees  shedding  leaves  in  the  dusky  air, 
The  omnibus,  tempest  of  iron  and  mud, 
That  creaks  ill  balanced  between  its  four  wheels 
And  slowly  rolls  its  eyes,  red  and  green  ; 
Workmen  going  to  the  club  while  they  smoke 
Their  cutty-pipes  under  the  gendarmes'  nose, 
Roofs  dripping,  walls  oozing,  and  pavement  that  slips, 
Broken  asphalt  and  gutters  overflowing  the  sewer, 
Behold  my  road  —  with  paradise  at  the  end. 

Then  there  are  among  these  verses  fantastic  bits  of 
diablerie  that  suggest  opium  dreams.  There  is  a  weird 
fascination  in  the  high  festival  of  the  satans  at  Ecba- 
tana,  where  they  "  make  litter  of  their  five  senses  for 
the  seven  sins  "  and  at  last  attempt  "  to  maintain  the 
balance  in  their  duel  with  God  by  sacrificing  hell  to 
universal  love."2  Another  of  these  "twilight  pieces," 

1  Le  bruit  du  cabaret,  la  fange  du  trottoir, 

Les  plantanes  dechus  s'effeuillant  dans  Fair  noir, 
L'omnibus,  ouragan  de  ferailles  et  de  boue, 
Qui  grince  mal  assis  entre  ses  quatre  roues, 
Et  roule  ses  yeux  verts  et  rouges  lentement ; 
Les  ouvriers  allant  au  club,  tout  en  fumant 
Leur  brule-gueule  au  nez  des  agents  de  police, 
Toits  qui  degoutent,  raurs  suintants,  pave  qui  glisse, 
Bitume  de'f once,  ruisseaux  comblant  1'egout ; 
Voila  ma  route  —  avec  le  paradis  au  bout. 

2  Font  litiere  aux  sept  pe'ches  de  leurs  cinq  sens. 

En  maintenant  1'equilibre  de  ce  duel, 
Par  moi  1'Enfer  dont  c'est  ici  le  repaire 
Se  sacrifie  a  1'Amour  universel ! 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   LYRIC   POETRY.  349 

as  Verlaine  grimly  calls  them,  represents  a  countess 
in  prison  holding  in  her  lap  the  head  of  her  husband, 
whom  she  has  killed  in  a  fit  of  jealousy  while  he  was 
in  mortal  sin.  The  head  speaks  to  tell  her  that  he 
loves  her  still,  and  gasps :  "  Damn  thyself  that  we 
be  not  parted."  "Pity,  pity,  my  God!"  she  shrieks, 
and  by  that  prayer  is  torn  from  her  lover  to  paradise, 
to  discover,  like  another  of  these  incarnations  of  pas- 
sion, that  "hell  is  absence." 

Such  conceptions  are  the  sign  of  an  unbalanced 
mind,  of  which  many  traces  can  be  found  in  other 
poems  whose  rhythm  has  the  capricious  beauty  of  a 
hashish  dream  and,  like  our  English  "Kubla-Khan," 
defies  the  analysis  of  the  rhetorician.  An  instance  of 
this  is  afforded  by  his  "Art  poe'tique,"  which  has  a 
double  interest  because  it  both  illustrates  and  charac- 
terizes the  aspirations  of  the  decadent  school,  though 
they  write  their  best  poetry  when  they  are  recreant  to 
it.  It  may  not  be  without  interest,  therefore,  to  trans- 
late as  well  as  may  be  the  sense,  or  what  seems  to  be 
the  sense,  of  a  few  stanzas,  laboring  to  be  literal,  though 
with  the  certainty  of  remaining  obscure :  "  Music  be- 
fore everything;  therefore  choose  the  unequal,  more 
vague,  more  soluble  in  air,  with  nothing  in  it  that  has 
weight  or  pose.  Then,  too,  you  must  not  go  choose 
your  words  too  cautiously.  Nothing  is  dearer  than 
the  gray  song,  where  the  indefinite  joins  the  pre- 
cise .  .  .  For  shade  is  still  our  desire,  —  not  color,  only 
shade.  Oh,  shade  alone  affiances  dream  to  the  dream, 
and  flute  to  the  horn." l 

1  De  la  musique  avant  toute  chose, 

Et,  pour  cela,  prefere  1'Impair 
Plus  vague,  plus  soluble  dans  Tair, 
Sans  rieu  en  lui  qui  pese  ou  qui  pose. 


350  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

What  this  last  line  may  mean  I  cannot  conjecture, 
nor  perhaps  Verlaine  either,  for  a  little  later  he  adds 
this  counsel:  "Let  thy  verse  be  good  luck  scattered 
on  the  crisped  wind  of  the  morning  that  reeks  of  mint 
and  thyme  .  .  .  And  all  the  rest  is  literature." l 
Which  is  merely  Verlaine's  recognition  of  the  fact  that 
to  him  words  are  more  than  ideas,  style  more  than 
matter ;  and  though  this  is  contrary  to  any  true  sym- 
bolism in  poetry,  it  is  true  in  a  large  measure  of  the 
verses  of  many  decadents  who  have  allowed  them- 
selves to  be  called  Symbolists  though  they  were  appro- 
priately described  by  Verlaine  as  "  Cymbalists." 

It  is  not  without  significance  that  many  of  those  who 
for  a  time  attracted  most  attention  in  this  group  were  for- 
eigners :  More*as  a  Greek,  Viel^-Griffin  and  Merrill  Amer- 
icans, and  the  Belgian  Maeterlinck  who  later  won  distinc- 
tion as  a  dramatist.  Of  Symbolists  who  were  French  by 
birth  one  need  name  only  Ghil,  Mallarme*,  and  De  Ee- 
gnier,  this  last  the  most  talented  lyric  poet  of  them  all. 

These  men  undertook,  or  professed  to  undertake,  to 
express  essentially  poetic  sentiments  indirectly  by  far- 
fetched metaphors,  or  even  by  the  sound  of  words  and 
letters.  Thus  Ghil  tells  us  that  "a  is  black,  e  white, 

II  faut  ainsi  que  tu  n'ailles  point 

Choisir  tes  mots  sans  quelque  meprise : 
Rien  de  plus  cher  que  la  chanson  grise 

Ou  I'lndecis  au  Precis  se  joint. 


Car  nous  voulons  la  Nuance  encor, 

Pas  la  Couleur,  rien  que  la  nuance ! 
Oh !  la  nuance  seule  fiance 

Le  reve  au  reve  et  la  flute  au  cor. 
1  Que  ton  vers  soit  la  bonne  aventure 

Eparse  au  vent  crispe  du  matin 

Qui  va  fleurant  la  menthe  et  le  thym  .  .  . 

Et  tout  le  reste  est  litte'rature. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  LYRIC  POETRY.      351 

i  blue,  o  red,  and  u  yellow ;  "  while  another  theorist  of 
onomatopoeia,  Eimbaud,  indignantly  avers  that  any 
decadent  ought  to  know  that  "  i  is  red,  o  blue,  and  u 
green."  Not  content  with  this,  they  have  discovered  a 
pre-established  harmony  between  vowel  sounds  and 
musical  instruments :  "  a  is  the  organ,  e  the  harp,  i  the 
violin,  o  the  trumpet,  and  u  the  flute."  Or,  again,  "  a  is 
monotony,  e  serenity,  i  passion  and  prayer,  o  glory,  and 
u  the  ingenuous  smile,"  though  not  because  that  is 
what  might  naturally  end  such  an  ars  poetica,  for  the 
diphthongs  have  their  significance  also,  and  even  combi- 
nations of  vowel  and  consonant  are  not  neglected  in 
Rimbaud's  Symbolist  "  Gradus  ad  Parnassum."  1 

Verlaine  does  not  go  to  these  extremes,  nor  do  any 
but  the  mountebanks  among  the  Symbolists  follow 
this  will-o'-the-wisp  except  to  attract  attention  or  show 
their  virtuosity.  But  Verlaine  is  always  a  poet  of 
impulse  or  instinct,  and  is  only  just  to  himself  when 
he  asserts  2  that  verse  is  to  him  a  spontaneous  expres- 
sion of  feeling,  conscious  of  no  literary  tradition  and 
developing  no  consecutive  thought.  Hence  comes  his 
indifference  to  the  consecrated  literary  usages  of  words. 
They  have  not  the  same  meaning  for  him  that  they 
would  have  to  a  poet  of  literary  training,  and  yet  his 
ear  delights  in  them.  As  Lemaitre  suggests,  it  is 
as  though  he  had  entered  the  Parnassian  Cenacle,  had 
listened  to  those  tuneful  disciples  of  art  for  art,  and 
then  had  left  their  company  "  intoxicated  by  the  music 
of  their  words,  but  by  their  music  alone."  The  same 
writer  concludes  his  delicate,  sympathetic,  yet  search- 
ing diagnosis  of  this  morbid  spirit  with  the  antitheti- 

1  Cp.  Rimbaud,  Traite  du  verbe,  and   Brunetiere,  Poesie  lyrique, 
ii.  243. 

2  Cp.  Huret,  L'EnquSte  litt^raire. 


352  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

cally  balanced  judgment :  "  Verlaine  has  the  senses  of 
a  sick  man,  but  the  soul  of  a  child ;  he  has  a  naive 
charm  in  his  unhealthy  languor ;  he  is  a  decadent  who 
has  in  him  most  of  the  primitive  man." 

Like  Baudelaire  and  like  Banville,  Verlaine  and 
the  decadents  more  or  less  closely  related  to  him  suffer 
from  a  morbid  singularity,  the  overstimulation  of  indi- 
vidualism inherited  from  the  bankruptcy  of  Romanti- 
cism. Hence  the  line  of  their  development  would 
naturally  be  lyric  poetry.  But  to  those  who  are  anx- 
iously watching  the  signs  in  the  literary  heavens  there 
seems  small  promise  in  this  school  of  any  permanent 
advance  in  the  art  or  mechanism  of  song.  They  stand 
for  reaction  from  the  coldly  formal  objectivity  of  the 
Parnassians,  and  their  value  to  the  next  generation 
will  probably  seem  to  be  that  they  reasserted  the 
rightful  place  in  lyric  poetry  of  individuality  and 
idealism.  For  this  they  will  be  remembered,  while 
their  licenses  in  language  and  rhythm  will  sooner  be 
forgotten  than  forgiven. 

Mention  may  be  made  also  of  the  patriotic  lyrics  of 
Paul  De*roulede,  who  by  his  Chants  du  soldat  (1872), 
the  Nouveaux  chants  (1875),  and  Les  Marches  et  son- 
neries  (1881),  revived  the  martial  ardor  of  France  after 
the  disasters  of  the  Terrible  Year.  Among  the  younger 
poets  of  promise  may  be  named  Fernand  Gregh  and 
Andrd  Rivoire,  who  represent,  each  in  his  way,  an  effort 
to  conciliate  French  poetic  tradition  with  the  modern 
spirit,  avoiding  alike  the  aloofness  of  the  Parnassians 
and  the  vagaries  of  the  Symbolists. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       353 


CHAPTEE  X. 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.1 

THE  drama  of  modern  France  is  not  a  development 
of  the  Eomantic  movement,  still  less  a  reversion  to 
the  classical  type  as  it  was  understood  by  Ponsard  and 
his  School  of  Good  Sense.  It  owes  much  to  Diderot  • 

and  the  dramatic  reformers  of  the  eighteenth  century, , 
and  more  than  it  is  always  willing  to  confess,  to  ^  ^  /(  ' 
Scribe,  who,  while  the  psychological  comedy  of  social 
satire  was  awaiting  its  development,  transfigured  the 
humble  vaudeville  into  the  legitimate  drama.  During 
the  generation  that  separates  the  first  from  the  third 
Napoleon  Scribe  was  without  a  rival  in  popular  favor, 
and  the  fertility  and  rapidity  of  his  production  seemed 
to  leave  no  demand  unsatisfied.2  Perhaps  no  other 
playwright  has  ever  enjoyed  so  long  an  undisputed 
pre-eminence  or  reaped  such  rich  rewards.  But  the 
cause  of  his  success  is  also  the  cause  of  the  shade  of 
mocking  contempt  with  which  it  is  now  the  literary 

1  For  the  statistics  of  the  modern  stage  Soubies,  La  Comedie-Fran- 
caise  depuis  1'epoque  romantique,  1824-1895,  is  invaluable.     All  the 
dramatists  named  in  this  chapter  and  many  others  are  discussed  in 
Lemaitre,  Impressions  de  theatre,  10  vols. 

2  Scribe  was  born  in  1791,  and  died  in  1861.     Some  four  hundred  of 
his  pieces  have  been  collected  in  seventy-six  volumes.    For  critical 
appreciations  see  Lauson.  p.  966 ;    Brunetiere,  F^poques  du  the'atre, 
p.  349  ;  Sainte-Beuve,  Portraits  contemporains,  ii.  91  and  589;  Weiss, 
Le  theatre  et  les  moeurs,  p.  3. 

23 


354  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

fashion  to  dismiss  him.  It  must  be  admitted  that 
Scribe  never  seeks  to  rise  above  the  philistine  realism 
of  his  audience.  There  is  a  smug  worldliness  about 
the  plays  as  there  was  about  the  man.  Virtue  with 
him  must  always  be  rewarded  in  current  coin,  a  dot 
is  the  highest  adornment  of  beauty,  to  get  on  in  the 
world  is  the  chief  end  of  the  human  race.  There 
is  a  frankly  naive  confession  of  the  dramatist's  phi- 
losophy of  life  in  the  inscription  on  his  palatial  house 
at  Se'rincourt,  which  one  may  render  thus :  — 

The  stage  has  procured  this  retreat  for  the  poet. 
Passer,  my  thanks,  for  to  you  I  may  owe  it. 

He  had  no  higher  ambition  than  to  give  the  public 
what  it  wanted,  and  as  much  as  it  would  take  at  his 
price. 

Yet  Scribe  plays  an  important  part  in  the  evolution 
of  the  drama,  for  he  understood  the  art  of  the  play- 
wright as  hardly  another  has  done.  Each  incident 
that  came  to  his  notice  took  a  dramatic  form  in  his 
mind.  Just  as  a  slight  shock  will  induce  some  satu- 
rated solution  to  a  crystallization  that  is  almost  instan- 
taneous, so  the  least  hint  sufficed  to  set  a  new  dramatic 
situation  in  the  kaleidoscope  of  Scribe's  mind.  Legouve' 
tells  us  that  he  turned  the  mediocre  five-act  tragedy  of 
"  La  Chanoinesse  "  into  a  lively  one-act  farce  while  the 
author  was  reading  it  to  him.  He  would  remodel  on 
the  spot  a  play  whose  rehearsal  showed  a  lack  of  tell- 
ing effects.  A  mere  hint  sufficed  him,  and  the  joint 
authorship  so  frequently  noted  on  the  titlepages  of 
his  plays  often  amounted  to  no  more  than  that.  More 
than  one  writer  was  astonished  to  receive  a  share  of 
fame  and  profit  for  work  in  which  he  could  not  recog- 
nize his  paternity.  But  Scribe  was  as  particular  in 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       355 

this  regard  as  Dumas  had  been  careless.  He  looked 
at  the  matter  as  an  honorable  dramatic  craftsman,  the 
artisan  of  art  for  profit  rather  than  the  artist  of  art  for 
truth,  and  so  he  made  friends  of  all  his  rivals. 

His  supremacy  lay,  as  Vitet  says,  in  "  the  gift  of 
discovering  at  every  step,  almost  with  no  occasion, 
theatrical  combinations  of  new  and  striking  effect." 
The  spectator  feels  the  fascination  and  the  succeeding 
mental  vacancy  of  a  juggling  exhibition,  that  leaves  in 
his  mind,  as  Dumas  fils  has  put  it  in  one  of  his  dog- 
matic prefaces,  "  neither  an  idea,  nor  a  reflection,  nor 
an  enthusiasm,  nor  a  hope,  nor  a  remorse,  nor  disgust, 
nor  ease.  You  have  looked,  listened,  been  puzzled, 
laughed,  wept,  passed  the  evening,  been  amused.  This 
is  much,  but  you  have  learned  nothing." 

Such  technical  skill  as  this  is  no  title  to  literary 
fame.  Scribe  made  his  first  shrewd  appeal  to  the 
public  ear  by  flattering  the  moneyed  aristocracy  of  the 
Eestoration  while  he  soothed  the  wounded  pride  of 
his  country  by  delicate  allusions  to  the  glories  of  the 
Empire.  His  best  work  was  done  after  the  Eevolu- 
tion  of  1830  had  given  alike  freedom  and  occasion 
for  mild  political  persiflage  that  has  indeed  hardly 
a  trace  of  the  strength  or  seriousness  of  satire.1  A 
standing  resort  in  these  plays  is  to  contrast  the  new 
democratic  with  the  old  aristocratic  spirit,  a  dramatic 
conflict  that  has  now  almost  wholly  yielded  to  the 
frank  recognition  of  democracy  in  the  drama  of  modern 
society.2  Scribe,  then,  was  in  no  way  a  reformer  or 


1  For  instance:  Bertrand  et  Raton,  1833;  La  Camaraderie,  1837; 
Le  Verre  d'eau,   1840;   Une  Chaine,  1841;   Adrienne  Lecouvreur, 
1849;  Bataille  de  dames,  1851. 

2  One  may  find  it  still  in  Ohnet's  Maitre  des  forges,  and  in  San- 
deau's  Mademoiselle  de  la  Seigliere. 


356  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

even  an  originator.  He  was  too  much  of  a  mate- 
tialist  and  philistine  to  have  any  close  affiliation  with 
the  idealism  of  the  Romanticists,  the  playful  poetry 
of  De  Musset,  or  the  unbridled  fancy  of  Dumas.  It 
was  a  degraded  form  of  drama  into  which  he  expanded 
the  vaudeville.  His  local  color  is  careless,  his  delinea- 
tion of  character  is  weak  ;  and  yet  he  was  a  necessary 
factor  in  the  dramatic  development ;  for  the  realistic 
satirists  of  the  next  generation,  who  took  their  spirit 
from  Balzac,  learned  from  Scribe,  and  could  have 
learned  from  him  alone,  that  mastery  of  the  art  and  rou- 
tine of  theatrical  presentation  which  has  given  France 
its  unquestioned  leadership  in  the  drama. 

This  supremacy  has  been  won  by  few,  —  by  Augier, 
Dumas  fils,  Sardou;  it  has  been  maintained  by  many 
excellent  playwrights,  among  whom  Feuillet,  Pailleron, 
Labiche,  and  Rostand  have  shown  marked  individuality. 
The  new  note  was  first  struck  and  nobly  maintained 
by  Emile  Augier,  whose  best  work  the  public  voice 
already  recognizes  as  classic  and  worthy  to  endure. 
He  it  was  who,  when  comedy  was  in  danger  of  being 
stifled  between  Scribe's  pretentious  vaudeville  and  the 
equally  pretentious  Romantic  sensational  drama,  re- 
stored it,  with  the  help  of  Dumas  fils,  to  a  life  more 
vigorous  and  more  moral,  more  realistic,  more  truly 
contemporary,  than  French  literature  had  known  since 
the  time  of  Moliere,1  reflecting  in  this  the  powerful 
influence  of  the  novels  of  Balzac,  that  unfortunately 
did  not  make  itself  felt  till  their  author  was  beyond 
the  consolations  of  appreciation. 

Augier's  work,  however,  is  not  homogeneous,  and  must 
therefore  be  considered  chronologically.  He  had  been 
trained  in  Paris  for  the  law,  and  in  this  profession  he 

1  Cp.  Lanson,  p.  1041  sqq. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.        357 

began  his  career.1  But  he  had  inherited  from  his 
mother,  the  daughter  of  the  prolific  novelist  and  dram- 
atist Pigault-Lebrun,  a  bent  for  literature,  so  that  the 
law  seemed  to  him  a  triste  harnais,  as  he  says  in  "  La 
Jeunesse,"  impeding  the  flight  of  his  genius.  He  stole 
time  from  his  profession  to  write  "  Charles  VII.  in 
Naples,"  a  drama  on  the  already  unfashionable  Ro- 
mantic lines,  that  found  no  favor  with  managers  and 
probably  deserved  none.  He  was  undiscouraged  by 
this  check,  however ;  and  his  second  piece,  "  La  Cigue  " 
showed  the  result  of  the  collapse  of  Hugo's  "  Bur- 
graves"  in  the  preceding  year,  by  its  dignified  self- 
restraint,  though  it  still  lacked  realistic  strength. 
>Ponsard  now  saw  in  Augier  a  welcome  recruit  to  the 
School  of  Good  Sense,  and  as  amended  by  his  practised 
hand  "  La  Cigue  "  achieved  a  success  that  decided  the 
dramatist's  career. 

This  classical  play,  in  regular  but  somewhat  pedes- 
trian verse,  is  full  of  grace  and  playful  wit,  but,  as 
the  title  implies,  Greek  in  scene,  and  with  very  little 
trace  of  the  peculiar  mint-stamp  that  marks  Augier's 
later  work ;  while  a  second  classical  play,  "  Le  Joueur 

1  Born  1820,  died  1889.  Theatre  (7  vols.).  Dates  of  production 
of  the  principal  plays:  La  Cigue,  1844;  Un  Homme  de  bien,  1845; 
L'Aventuriere,  1848  ;  Gabrielle,  1849  ;  Le  Joueur  de  flute,  1850 ;  Diane, 
1852;  La  Pierre  de  touche,  1853;  Philiberte,  1853;  Le  Mariage 
d'Olympe,  1855 ;  Le  Gendre  de  M,  Poirier,  1855  ;  Ceinture  Doree,  1855  ; 
La  Jeunesse,  1858;  Les  Lionnes  pauvres,  1858:  Un  Beau  mariage, 
1859  ;  Les  Effrontes,  1861  ;  Le  Fils  de  Giboyer,  1862;  Maitre  Guerin, 
1864;  La  Contagion,  1866;  Paul  Forestier,  1868;  Lions  et  renards, 
1869;  Le  Postscriptum,  1869;  Jean  de  Thommeray,  1873;  Mademoi- 
selle Caverlet,  1876  ;  Les  Fourchambault,  1878. 

Critical  essays :  Parigot,  Emile  Augier  (Classiques  populaires) ; 
Lacour,  Trois  theatres  (Augier,  Dumas,  Sardou) ;  Matthews,  French 
Dramatists  ;  Sarrazin,  Moderne  Drama  der  Franzosen ;  Doumic, 
Portraits  d'ecrivains,  57. 


358  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

de  flute,"  that  may  well  date  from  this  time  though  it 
was  not  acted  till  much  later,  takes  up  the  parable  of 
"  Marion  de  Lorme  "  and  directly  contradicts  the  fun- 
damental thesis  of  his  greater  dramas.  This  contra- 
diction is  repeated  in  "  L'Aventuriere,"  the  tale  of 
another  frail  but  rehabilitated  heroine,  who  in  her 
striving  for  a  place  among  the  femmes  serieuses  di- 
vides at  least  the  sympathy  of  the  hearers,  —  a  sym- 
pathy that  when  his  eyes  were  opened  by  Dumas' 
"  Dame  aux  came'lias,"  Augier  became  most  zealous  to 
deny.  Still,  the  attentive  reader  might  have  discov- 
ered passages  even  here  that  indicated  his  coming  * 
vocation  as  the  defender  of  the  integrity  of  the  family, 
which  is  the  main  thesis  of  his  second  manner ;  and  to 
emphasize  these  he  rewrote  the  play  in  1860.  That 
he  was  still  feeling  his  way  to  the  proper  field  for  the 
exercise  of  his  dramatic  talent  is  suggested  by  "  L'Habit 
vert,"  a  witty  trifle  in  which  De  Musset  had  a  share. 
But  his  genius  was  too  serious  to  succeed  in  this  genre, 
and  if  he  recurred  to  it  twenty  years  later  in  "  Le  Post- 
scriptum,"  it  was  only  to  register  a  second  failure. 

The  reaction  from  Eomantic  idealism  is  first  strongly 
marked  in  "  G-abrielle,"  though  in  this  "  domestic 
drama  "  there  is  enough  idealization  left  to  make  the 
poetic  form  appropriate.  Indeed,  "  Gabrielle "  is  al- 
most a  hymn  to  the  fireside,  and  reveals  Augier  to  us 
as  a  social  moralist,  the  champion,  as  a  rather  ill- 
natured  critic  put  it,  of  "  the  average  and  conventional 
ethics,  that  knows  how  to  ally  the  calculation  of  inter- 
est to  the  language  of  sentiment,"  which,  taking  the 
world  as  it  goes,  is  not  such  a  very  bad  thing.  At 
any  rate,  it  was  precisely  what  the  Romanticists  had 
never  known  how  to  do.  They  might  and  did  mock 
the  bourgeois  sentiment  of  the  closing  line  of  "  Ga- 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       359 

brielle":  "0  pere  de  famille !  O  poete,  je  t'aime;" 
but  the  Academy  consoled  him  with  the  Monthyon 
prize.  The  wit  of  "  Gabrielle "  was  undeniable,  and 
one  sees  first  in  it  a  promise  of  the  serious,  forceful 
purpose  that  marks  his  masterpieces.  Yet  the  next 
steps  were  hesitating.  In  "  Diane  "  he  seemed  to  re- 
vert for  a  moment  to  Komantic  methods  in  an  histori- 
cal drama  that  shows  the  last  traces  of  the  virus  of 
"Marion  de  Lorme."  Then  in  "Philiberte"  he  tried 
his  hand  at  the  preciosite  of  the  eighteenth  century, 
guarding  the  unities  with  a  stringency  that  might 
warm  the  heart  of  Boileau,  but  showing  a  noteworthy 
advance  in  technical  skill  and  a  still  greater  develop- 
ment of  his  psychological  insight  in  the  affectionate 
care  with  which  he  unfolds  the  character  of  his  girl- 
heroine. 

Augier  now  began  to  work  in  collaboration  with  the 
novelist  Jules  Sandeau,1  whose  gentler  humor  may 
have  softened  somewhat  the  growing  sternness  of  the 
social  satirist.  Directly  these  plays,  "  La  Pierre  de 
touche "  and  "  Le  Gendre  de  M.  Poirier,"  probably 
owed  little  to  Sandeau ;  but  they  mark  the  cardinal 
point  in  Augier's  dramatic  career.  From  this  time  he 
almost  wholly  abandoned  verse,  and  his  fame  would 
lose  nothing  if  he  had  abandoned  it  entirely.  This 
change  from  the  School  of  Good  Sense  to  the  good 
sense  of  no  school  involved  or  induced  an  equal  change 
in  the  character  of  the  dramas,  which  became  more 
virile  and  realistic.  Augier  had  still  many  steps  to 
take,  but  he  took  none  so  vital  as  that  which  separates 

1  Born  1811;  died  1882.  His  best  novels,  "Mademoiselle  de  la 
Seigliere,"  "La  Chasse  au  roman,"  " Sacs et parchemins,"  "La  Maison 
de  Penarvan,"  and  several  more,  were  dramatized  with  the  aid  of 
Augier  and  others. 


360  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

"  Philiberte  "  from  "Le  Gendre  de  M.  Poirier."  On 
the  other  hand,  "  La  Pierre  de  touche "  is  interesting 
chiefly  as  a  sort  of  "  touchstone  "  by  which  to  test  the 
contribution  of  Sandeau  to  the  evolution  of  the  greater 
dramatist's  genius.  His  "  L'He'ritage "  furnishes  the 
situation,  which  is  the  opposition  of  the  genuine  artist 
to  the  pretender.  The  subject  is  not  essentially  dra- 
matic, and  only  a  strong  analysis  of  character  could 
save  the  play  from  sinking  to  the  commonplace.  This 
Augier  could  not  yet  give,  and  his  lavish  wit  did  not 
save  the  situation.  In  "  Le  Gendre  de  M.  Poirier," 
however,  he  took  only  the  fundamental  idea  from 
Sandeau,  and  without  direct  collaboration  worked 
under  the  immediate  inspiration  of  Moliere's  "  Bour- 
geois gentilhomme  "  and  "  George  Dan  din." 

"  Le  Gendre  de  M.  Poirier "  has  been  called  "  the 
finest  French  comedy  since  the  '  Mariage  de  Figaro/  " 
and  it  is  generally  regarded  by  the  dramatic  critics  of 
France  as  the  model  of  their  comedy  of  manners.  It 
is  indeed  an  "  honest,  healthy,  and  hardy  "  satire  on 
the  plutocracy  which  under  the  bourgeois  king  Louis 
Philippe  had  at  last  won  the  social  prominence  that  it 
had  claimed  since  the  days  of  Le  Sage's  "  Turcaret." 
M.  Poirier  is  a  retired  cloth-merchant,  a  millionaire, 
whose  ambition  is  the  peerage.  With  him  is  con- 
trasted Gaston,  a  bankrupt  nobleman,  to  whom  the 
ambitious  Poirier  has  given  his  daughter  Antoinette, 
while  nobler  phases  of  the  aristocracy  and  of  commer- 
cial life  are  presented  in  the  Duke  and  Verdelet. 
These  five  clearly  marked  types  are  the  only  impor- 
tant characters,  a  dramatic  economy  in  striking  con- 
trast to  the  former  excess  of  Scribe  and  the  later 
superfluity  of  Sardou.  It  is  in  these  characters,  not 
in  the  plot,  that  the  comic  force  of  the  play  rests. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       361 

Almost  every  speech  of  Poirier  throws  new  light  "on  a 
nature  true  to  life  in  all  its  many-sidedness,  and  the 
touch  of  the  artist  is  not  less  kindly  than  keen,  while 
the  most  sparkling  humor  scintillates  through  all. 
These  men,  like  all  of  Augier's  greater  creations,  are 
complex,  made  up  of  nobler  and  baser  elements,  so  that 
the  study  of  them  is  a  lesson  in  charity.  Gaston  is  no 
idealized  hero  of  romance.  His  mocking  Hague  in  the 
earlier  acts  accompanies  conduct  neither  righteous  nor 
noble,  but  the  good  in  him  wins  sympathy  from  the 
first.  So  the  contrast  between  the  virtues  of  the  Duke 
and  of  Verdelet  sheds  a  kindly  light  011  the  limitations 
of  each.  Antoinette,  in  whose  bourgeois  soul  trial 
develops  the  dignity  of  true  nobility,  may  be  artisti- 
cally less  great,  but  she  is  always  charming  ;  and  so 
this  comedy  realizes  the  old  maxim,  castigat  ridendo, 
and  there  is  nothing  bitter  in  the  laughter  it  evokes. l 

That  bitterness  came,  however,  when  Augier  at- 
tacked vices  more  corroding  than  aristocratic  vanity 
and  bourgeois  ambition.  "  Ceinture  dorde "  shows 
how  a  woman's  wealth  may  be  a  barrier  to  her  domes- 
tic happiness,  especially  in  France,  where,  more  than 
elsewhere,  marriage  for  money  is  an  obvious  butt  for 
satire.  "  How  unlucky,"  says  his  heroine,  "  for  a 
statue  to  be  of  gold  and  not  of  marble !  How  unfor- 
tunate when  the  material  is  more  prized  than  the 
workmanship,  when  one  marries  a  woman  for  her 
dowry  without  so  much  question  of  her  character  as 
one  would  make  in  engaging  a  domestic !  I  am  proud, 
and  I  will  not  be  taken  at  hap-hazard."  Yet  the  mar- 
riage of  her  choice  is  denied  her  till  the  wheel  of  for- 
tune has  deprived  her  father  of  his  tainted  wealth. 

1  A  fuller  analysis  of  this  comedy  may  be  found  in  my  own  edition 
of  it,  Boston,  1896  (Heath). 


362  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

This  drama  of  the  stock-exchange  has  a  peculiar 
interest,  for  it  prefigures  in  1855  those  social  satires 
that  begin  six  years  later  with  "  Les  Effronte's,"  though 
Augier  was  still  willing  to  accept  final  conversions, 
and  had  not  risen  to  the  sterner  realism  of  Vernouillet 
and  Gue'rin.  A  step  toward  this  truer  ethical  position 
is  marked  by  "  Le  Mariage  d'Olympe,"  a  tragedy  of  the 
marriage  of  a  social  interloper  with  a  man  of  noble 
blood  and  plebeian  instincts,  in  which  the  dramatist 
does  frank  penance  for  his  "  Joueur  de  flute."  Here  he 
takes  up  the  gauntlet  of  "  Marion  de  Lorme  "  and  "  La 
Dame  aux  camelias,"  and  shows  the  social  peril  that 
lies  in  the  rehabilitation  of  the  courtesan.  For  the 
morbid  sentiment  of  Komantic  sympathy,  he  substi- 
tuted a  healthy  common-sense ;  he  replaced  their  "  vir- 
ginity of  the  soul"  with  his  "homesickness  for  the 
gutter,"  and  with  keen  analysis  and  admirable  illustra- 
tion, he  pointed  a  course  that  Dumas  had  somewhat 
feebly  indicated  two  years  before  in  "  Diane  de  Lys." 
This  play  was  an  immense  advance  over  "  Gabrielle  "  in 
vital  power ;  and  the  Academy,  that  had  accorded  the 
former  the  rather  doubtful  honor  of  a  "  virtue  prize," 
welcomed  to  their  number,  in  1858,  the  author  of  "  Le 
Mariage  d'Olympe,"  which  indeed  did  more  than  any 
other  one  thing  to  banish  sentimental  sympathy  for 
this  form  of  vice  from  the  French  stage  for  the  rest  of 
the  century. 

His  next  play,  "  La  Jeunesse,"  showed  more  versa- 
tility than  discretion,  being  a  somewhat  sentimental 
threnody  on  the  disadvantages  of  youth,  that  "  used  to 
be  force,  dominion,  but  now  is  feebleness,  obstacle, 
exclusion,"  so  that  even  ardent  passion  barely  rescues 
men  from  the  fatal  mariage  de  convenance.  The  whole 
is  insignificant,  and  its  chief  interest  lies  in  the  allu- 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       363 

sions  to  the  overcrowding  of  the  learned  professions, 
for  they  show  that  the  dangers  of  a  literary  proletariat 
were  felt  in  France  even  before  1860.  A  much 
stronger  echo  of  the  "  Ceinture  doree,"  however,  could 
be  heard  in  "  Beau  mariage,"  which  also  reflects  the 
scientific  interests  of  the  epoch,  though  it  lacks  the 
psychological  continuity  and  delicate  characterization 
of  "  Poirier ;  "  but  already  "  Les  Lionnes  pauvres  "  had 
shown  a  far  riper  and  firmer  art,  and  must  rank  with 
"  Poirier  "  as  the  best  of  the  "  domestic  dramas." 

This  play,  whose  title  we  may  render  "  Poor  Ladies 
of  Fashion,"  had  been  originally  called  "  Les  Feinmes 
du  monde  entretenues."  But  the  censors  of  the  Second 
Empire  objected  to  the  name,  perhaps  because  they 
were  so  tolerant  of  the  thing.  It  is  a  fearless,  and  in 
no  small  degree  successful,  effort  to  paint  the  effect  of 
the  restless  reaching  out  for  material  gratification  that 
characterized  the  middle  class  of  Paris,  and  indeed  of 
the  Continent  generally,  in  the  heyday  of  the  Third 
Napoleon.  But  the  play  was  too  bold,  and  touched  too 
many  sensitive  spots  in  the  public  of  the  Parisian 
theatre,  to  permit  it  to  gain  immediate  popularity.  It 
was  the  first  drama  of  its  kind,  and  the  close  aroused  a 
too  painful  tragic  fear.  Nor  has  it  ever  been  frequently 
acted,  though  always  highly  esteemed,  for  similar  plays 
soon  learned  from  it  an  art  that  made  it  seem  less 
realistic  than  they.  It  contains,  however,  Augier's 
greatest  female  character,  Se*raphine,  "  cold,  cowardly, 
and  perversely  selfish,"  the  counterpart  and  prototype 
of  Daudet's  Sidonie,1  both  in  her  character  and  her 
fate,  as  she  sinks  from  the  limbo  of  the  lionnes 
pauvres  to  the  inferno  of  insolent  corruption.  Thus 
Augier  rejects  the  conventional  deus  ex  machina  to 
1  Fromont  jeune  et  Risler  aine. 


364  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

punish  vice  and  reward  virtue.  The  censors  had  de- 
manded that  he  should  show  Seraphine  scourged  with 
small-pox,  a  device  afterward  attempted  by  Zola  in 
"Nana;"  but  the  vision  that  he  opens  to  us  of  the 
inevitable  future  of  the  newly  launched  cascadeuse 
inspires  a  truer  and  deeper  dread  of  destiny. 

The  longing  for  wealth  without  effort,  for  unearned 
enjoyment,  is  not  new,  but  it  is  most  seen  in  mate- 
rialistic epochs  such  as  that  of  the  Second  Empire, 
and  its  manifestations  are  as  clear  and  as  dangerous  in 
society  as  in  the  family.  So  the  dramatist  is  naturally 
led  from  "  Les  Lionnes  pauvres "  to  "  Les  Effronte's," 
the  unprincipled  speculators,  developed  in  another 
sphere  by  the  same  social  virus  that  produced  Sera- 
phine. Skilfully  adapting  to  his  purpose  the  then 
recent  scandal  of  the  banker  De  Mires,  Augier  made 
his  Vernouillet  a  type  of  the  schemer  who  grazes,  and 
occasionally  oversteps  the  verge  of  legality  while  re- 
taining the  toleration  of  a  lax  society.  The  Figaro  of 
the  eighteenth  century  has  risen  many  grades  in  the 
social  sphere,  thanks  to  democracy  and  materialism. 
He  has  become  less  sentimental,  he  is  incapable  of  an 
unselfish  love,  he  sacrifices  self-respect  to  blague.  And 
by  the  side  of  this  social  flower  Augier  places  the 
Marquis  d'Auberive,  who  sees  in  Vernouillet  the  most 
dangerous  nightshade  blossom  of  modern  democracy, 
and  cynically  aids  him,  "amusing  himself  by  foment- 
ing the  corruption  of  the  bourgeoisie." 

To  advance  his  schemes  and  avenge  his  spites,  the 
social  adventurer  can  find  no  better  means  than  to  own 
a  newspaper,  on  whose  staff  he  employs  the  "revolver- 
journalist  "  Giboyer,  a  typical  literary  pretorian,  whose 
biting  pen  is  for  sale  to  the  highest  bidder  of  whatever 
party,  who  must  live  by  his  wits  since  these  have  been 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       365 

educated  at  the  expense  of  his  conscience ;  a  man  who 
"  would  scourge  his  own  father  with  epigrams  for  a 
modest  remuneration,"  the  fit  tool  of  the  aristocratic 
pessimist  and  of  the  democrat  educated  to  tastes  that 
he  cannot  satisfy.  But  the  plot  of  this  triple  alliance 
for  the  degradation  of  society  is  wholly  subordinate  to 
the  development  of  these  characteristic  products  of  our 
modern  democracy. 

"  Les  Effronte's  "  aroused  interest  and  excited  com- 
ment, but  the  "  Fils  de  Giboyer "  soon  stirred  a  far 
more  acrimonious  opposition  by  its  plain  though 
masked  allusions  to  that  valiant  knight  of  the  pen 
Louis  Veuillot.1  Here  the  press  as  an  engine  of  black- 
mail and  corruption  is  still  the  theme,  but  the  satire  is 
directed  largely  against  the  successful  men  of  business 
whom  capital  has  turned  into  timid  conservatives,  tools 
of  the  abler  nobility  and  of  their  unscrupulous  clerical 
allies.  The  interest  centres  in  this  triangular  struggle 
between  a  decaying  aristocracy,  a  vain  commercial  plu- 
tocracy, and  an  increasing  body  of  men  who  are  deter- 
mined or  compelled  to  live  by  their  wits.  In  a  series 
of  vivid  scenes,  the  Parisian  sees  the  conflict  of  his 
modern  society  revealed  to  him  with  sparkling  wit 
and  unfailing  dramatic  interest,  that  are  likely  to  make 
this  drama  one  of  the  most  enduring  of  its  time. 

Less  sensational  but  as  earnest  and  profound  is 
"  Maitre  Gue'rin  "  whose  central  figure,  a  country  law- 
yer, is  pronounced  by  French  criticism  to  be  "  perhaps 
the  most  original  and  clear-cut  character  that  our 
comedy  has  given  us  since  Moliere."  Unfortunately 
the  presentation  of  Gue'rin's  wife  and  son  shows  regret- 

1  A  certain  De  Mire'court  saw  fit  to  identify  himself  with  Giboyer's 
son,  and  answered  in  a  scurrilous  volume,  "  Le  Petit-fils  de  Pigault- 
Lebrun." 


366  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

table  concessions  to  the  sentimental  and  melodramatic 
tricks  of  Scribe.  The  Deroncerets,  father  and  daughter, 
victims  of  his  chicane,  are  obviously  inspired  by  an  af- 
fectionate study  of  Balzac's  "Recherche  de  1'absolu." 
But  when  the  lawyer  has  tricked  the  old  man  out  of 
the  last  remnant  of  his  property,  salving  his  conscience 
by  strict  adherence  to  the  letter  of  the  law,  he  is  as 
puzzled  as  Poirier  to  find  the  success  of  his  schemes 
thwarted  by  the  moral  revolt  of  his  wife  and  son. 
Yet,  though  puzzled,  he  is  not  repentant.  For  the 
Gue'rins  and  the  Vernouillets  of  society,  men  having 
their  consciences  seared  with  a  hot  iron,  Augier  seems 
to  say  there  is  no  repentance. 

Except  for  the  single  character  of  Gudrin,  this  play 
marks  a  retrogression  that  was  accentuated  by  "  Paul 
Forestier,"  whose  character  seems  too  weak  to  justify 
the  sacrifice  by  which  his  wife  wins  back  his  affection. 
Augier  was  never  to  surpass  u  Giboyer,"  but  it  was  in 
this  kind  that  he  was  still  to  do  his  best  work ;  and  in 
creating  the  D'Estrigaud  of  "  La  Contagion  "  and  "  Lions 
et  renards  "  he  drew  a  character  not  unworthy  to  stand 
beside  the  four  pillars  of  his  fame,  Poirier,  Se"raphine, 
Vernouillet,  and  Giboyer. 

The  "  contagion  "  of  modern  society  is  the  desire  of 
wealth  without  work,  —  a  spirit  that,  as  Augier  shows, 
saps  all  idealism,  public  patriotism,  and  private  honor. 
It  is  the  spirit  of  blague,  already  reproved  in  "  Poirier," 
—  a  spirit  before  which  nothing  is  sacred,  —  the 
Mephistophelian  spirit  that  enamels  our  overstrained 
consciences  with  its  skeptical  Pyrrhonism,  mocks  at 
duty  and  virtue,  and  answers  every  noble  aspiration 
with  a  sneer.  This  Hague,  that  infects  even  generous 
souls,  is  personified  here  in  the  stock-gambler  D'Estri- 
gaud, who  defeats  himself  at  last  because  healthy  coin- 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       367 

mon-sense  morality  revolts  at  the  logical  results  of  his 
social  and  ethical  system.  "  You  have  gangrened  my 
honor,"  says  Andre\  "  but  your  sting  can  be  cured,  like 
others,  with  cautery.  Farewell,  gentlemen.  You  may 
make  litter  of  all  that  we  respect,  —  conscience,  duty, 
family ;  but  the  day  will  come  when  these  outraged 
truths  will  reassert  themselves  in  thunder."  He  re- 
coils from  the  abyss  of  moral  degradation,  and  even 
the  demi-mondaine  Navarette  holds  herself  too  good 
to  marry  the  discredited  Uagueur.  But  Andre*  has 
scotched  the  snake,  not  killed  it;  and  D'Estrigaud  reap- 
pears in  "  Lions  et  renards  "  as  the  rival  of  a  disguised 
Jesuit  in  pursuit  of  the  wealth  of  an  heiress.  This 
play  has  several  scenes  of  delicious  humor  for  the  like 
of  which  we  must  go  back  to  "  Poirier."  At  last  the 
llagueur  is  so  impressed  with  his  adversary's  deft  un- 
scrupulousness  that  he  pays  him  the  homage  of  imita- 
tion and  turns  Jesuit  himself,  thus  pointing  the  author's 
anti-clerical  moral. 

This  moral  the  Franco-German  War  soon  enforced 
with  terrible  emphasis.  Outraged  truth  did  indeed 
"reassert  itself  in  thunder."  And  after  Sardou  had 
voiced  his  feelings  in  "  Le  Koi  Garotte,"  an  opera-bouffe 
of  more  than  wonted  vacuity,  after  Dumas  fils  had 
offered  the  public  the  unsavory  diet  of  his  "  Visite  de 
noces,"  the  serious  Augier  presented  in  "  Jean  de  Thom- 
meray "  a  patriotic  sequel  to  "  La  Contagion,"  inter- 
esting for  its  attempt  to  identify  the  integrity  of  the 
family  with  that  of  the  state,  though  unfortunately 
one  of  the  least  inspired  of  his  later  dramas.  Indeed, 
Augier  had  now  reached  what  economists  would  call 
the  "  stationary  state."  "  Madame  Caverlet "  and  "  Les 
Fourchambault "  are  pieces  that  bear  the  stamp 
of  the  master,  but  they  do  not  rise  to  the  height  of 


368  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Giboyer  and  D'Estrigaud  nor  to  the  serener  air  of 
Poirier.  The  former  deals  with  divorce,  and  doubtless 
contributed  its  quota  to  the  legislative  changes  that 
were  soon  to  follow.1  It  has  an  extraordinary  vigor 
of  dialogue,  and  some  of  the  scenes  are  of  the  greatest 
power,  but  the  public  was  probably  right  in  thinking 
that  it  lacked  interest  as  a  whole.  "  Les  Fourcham- 
bault "  deserved  and  gained  more  favor.  Indeed,  the 
piece  is  among  the  most  compactly  constructed  and 
vigorously  executed  of  all  Augier's  dramas.  He  here 
trenches  on  the  special  preserve  of  Dumas,  and  places 
in  the  foremost  rank  an  illegitimate  son,  whom  he  uses 
to  contrast  the  strength  of  character  that  comes  from 
the  necessity  of  winning  one's  way  with  the  effemi- 
nating influences  of  assured  ease  and  luxury.  The  chief 
blot  on  the  play  is  the  melodramatic  sentiment  of  the 
close.  It  marks  in  1878  the  reaction,  that  we  shall 
trace  presently  in  the  novel,  from  thoroughgoing  Nat- 
uralism, which  might  then  have  seemed  at  its  height, 
though,  from  our  present  position,  we  can  see  that  it 
was  already  showing  signs  of  approaching  decline. 

If  we  regard  Augier's  work  as  a  whole,  his  early 
verses  will  show  a  plastic  ease  and  daring  use  of  meta- 
phor that  recall  the  traditions  of  Romanticism,  and 
reappear  in  his  later  prose  in  vigorous  turns  and  in 
strong  and  startling  comparisons.  He  does  not  shrink 
from  the  slang  of  the  boulevard  or  the  boudoir  when 
it  suits  his  purpose ;  and  if  he  is  less  profuse  and  more 
methodical  in  his  resort  to  these  neologisms  than 
Dumas,  yet  quite  a  full  nosegay  of  them  may  be 
gathered  even  by  the  reader  who  skims  the  conversa- 
tion of  Giboyer  and  D'Estrigaud.  But  no  contem- 

1  For  a  resum£  of  the  divorce  legislation  of  France,  see  Report  of 
the  U.  S.  Commissioner  of  Labor,  1889,  pp.  1004-1007. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       369 

porary  dramatist  has  a  sterner  or  loftier  conception  of 
his  vocation  than  Augier.  He  is  convinced  that  "the 
drama  is  the  most  active  if  not  the  most  nutritive  part 
of  literature,"  and  keeps  ever  before  his  eyes  the  edu- 
cation of  his  public.  He  sacrifices  nothing  to  show 
with  Sardou,  nor  to  declamation  with  Dumas.  This 
very  earnestness  makes  him  sometimes  hard  and  bit- 
ter, for,  as  he  makes  Andre*  say  in  "La  Contagion," 
"  some  bites  must  be  cured  with  cautery  ;  "  but  beside 
his  D'Estrigaud  and  Vernouillet,  beside  Maitre  Gue'rin 
and  Giboyer,  beside  Se'raphine  and  Olympe,  there  are 
men  and  women  full  of  noble  hopefulness  and  aspira- 
tion, whose  masculine  virtue  and  feminine  dignity 
seem  more  admirable  and  less  commonplace  than 
these  homely  qualities  appear  in  the  hands  of  any 
other  modern  dramatist.  And,  as  has  been  said,  even 
his  reprobation  is  mingled  with  pity.  Vice  with  him 
is  almost  always  the  distortion  of  virtue.  He  has  a 
peculiarly  catholic,  broad-minded  vision  that  gives  a 
pathos  to  the  limitations  of  a  Poirier  or  a  Pommeau, 
that  sees  the  world  neither  en  rose  nor  en  gris,  but 
with  the  honest  sympathy  of  a  true  student  of  nature. 
Upright  and  downright,  he  leaves  on  the  mind  the 
impression  of  serious  humor  and  keen  irony  that 
compel  respect,  together  with  robust  loyalty  and  sound 
honesty  that  inspire  trust. 

Next  to  Augier  in  critical  esteem  if  not  in  popular 
favor  stood  the  son  of  Alexandre  Dumas;  but  a 
greater  contrast  than  that  between  the  authors  of 
"Monte  Oisto"  and  of  the  "Demi-monde"  it  might 
be  hard  to  find  in  the  history  of  literature.  The 
father's  unscrupulous,  rich,  romantic  fancy  gave  place 
to  the  close  observation  and  realistic  earnestness  of  the 
son.  But  the  whole  family  history  had  been  full  of 

24 


370  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

contradictions,  epigrammatically  summed  up  in  the 
words  of  Anatole  France  : l  "A  poor  negress,  thrown 
into  the  arms  of  a  colonist  at  St.  Domingo,  conceives 
a  hero,  who  begets  in  his  turn  a  colossus,  whose  son 
educated  in  the  theatres  of  Paris  stirs  consciences  there 
with  exemplary  rudeness  and  unheard-of  audacity." 

This  unbending  moralist2  was  a  natural  son,  and 
has  drawn  in  "  L'Affaire  Cle'menceau  "  a  moving  pic- 
ture of  the  torments  caused  by  this  origin  during  his 
school  life.  His  father  had  indeed  recognized  him, 
and,  school  days  over,  the  boy  became  immediately 
the  companion  and  associate  of  this  still  youthful 
high-liver,  who  was  then  in  the  zenith  of  his  pros- 
perity. The  son  naturally  followed  the  father's  ex- 
ample, and  in  1848  found  himself  some  50,000  francs 
in  debt.  It  was  a  rude  awakening,  but  with  prompt  de- 
cision he  took  leave  of  his  old  associates  and  sold  his 
experience  to  the  world  in  "  La  Dame  aux  camelias." 
From  that  day  he  became  a  serious,  hard-working 
author,  first  to  pay  his  debts,  then  to  gratify  a  legiti- 
mate ambition,  and  to  have  his  say  on  the  questions 
of  the  day.  But  his  early  novels,  with  the  single  ex- 

1  La  Vie  litteraire,  i.  29. 

2  Born  1824  ;  died  1895.   Theatre  complet  (7  vols.).    Dates  of  princi- 
pal pieces:   Dame  aux  camelias,   1852;   Diane  de  Lys,  1853;   Demi- 
monde,  1855;    Question   d'argent,    1857;    Fils   naturel,    1858;    Fere 
prodigue,   1859;   Ami   des   femmes,    1864;    Idees   de  Mme.  Aubray, 
1867;   Visite  de  noces,   1871;   Princesse  Georges,  1871;  Femme  de 
Claude,  1873;   M.  Alphonse,  1873;   L'Etrangere,  1 876  ;   Princesse  de 
Bagdad,  1881  ;   Denise,  1885;   Francillon,  1887.     Novels:   Dame  aux 
camelias,  1848;  L'Affaire  Clemenceau,  1867,  and  many  others.     Plays 
revised  by  Dumas  are  collected  in  Theatre  des  autres  (1894).    He  had  a 
share  in  "  Supplice   d'une   femme  "  (1865)  and  "  Danicheffs  (1876)} 
and  his  own  "Clemenceau"  was  dramatized  by  D'Artois  in  1887. 

Criticism  :  Bourget,  Essais  de  psychologie  contemporaine ;  Lacour, 
Trois  theatres ;  Matthews,  French  Dramatists ;  Sarrazin,  Das  mo- 
derne  Drama  der  Franzosen ;  Doumic,  Portraits  d'e'crivains. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  BEAM  A.       371 

ception  of  this  realistic  study  of  the  life  and  death  of 
the  consumptive  courtesan  Alphonsine  Plessis,  have 
little  value  for  the  study  of  his  literary  development. 
Like  his  first  dramatic  attempt,1  these  tales  are  es- 
sentially Eomantic,  a  natural  reflection  of  the  manner 
of  the  elder  Dumas. 

Lack  of  money  produced  the  "  Dame  aux  camelias," 
and  four  years  later  the  same  powerful  motive  led 
Dumas  to  his  true  vocation  by  inducing  him  to  drama- 
tize it,  a  feat  performed  in  eight  days.  His  play  was 
indeed  refused  a  license  till  the  Empire  came  to  set  a 
more  liberal  standard  of  theatrical  morals,  but  once 
produced  it  achieved  immediate  success.  February  2, 
1852,  is  a  true  milestone  in  the  history  of  the  French 
stage ;  for  Dumas'  drama  marked  a  revolution  as  pro- 
found and  more  lasting  than  the  Eomantic,  though  it 
had  come  with  none  of  the  pompous  heralding  of 
"  Hernani."  It  was  the  beginning  of  the  realistic  study 
of  social  problems  that  has  changed  the  face  of  the 
modern  drama.  Balzac  had  seen  the  need,  but  had  not 
the  necessary  knowledge  of  the  stage  to  achieve  suc- 
cess. To  his  keen  insight  into  character  Dumas  added 
an  innate  aptness  for  the  technique  of  Scribe.  He  tells 
us  in  a  frank  preface  how  he  started  out  resolute  and 
free  in  search  of  truth,  but  inspired  less  by  poetic  fer- 
vor than  by  need  of  money,  and  therefore  perhaps  the 
more  careful  to  remember  that  for  its  successful  pres- 
entation this  dramatic  truth  must  be  shown  conven- 
tionally, logically.  So  from  the  first  he  developed  his 
pieces  according  to  strict  sequence,  and  he  has  known 
how  to  answer  the  Naturalists  who  have  blamed  him 
for  this  sacrifice  of  theoretic  realism  with  convincing 
vigor  and  biting  acerbity. 

1  In  1845.     It  was  reprinted  as  a  curiosity  in  1868. 


372  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

"  The  Lady  with  the  Camelias  "  is  a  study  from  the 
life  of  an  acquaintance  of  the  author,  a  lady  of  easy 
virtue,  who  loves  in  the  Marion  de  Lorme  fashion  with 
a  "  virginity  of  the  heart,"  and  sacrifices  her  life  to  her 
affection.  "  Much  shall  be  forgiven  her,  for  she  loved 
truly,"  is  the  conclusion  of  the  author.  The  subject 
dates  back  to  Pre'vost's  novel  "  Manon  Lescaut,"  and 
had  been  dramatized  by  Palissot  in  1782,  but  neither 
of  these  writers  had  ventured  wholly  to  rehabilitate 
the  courtesan.  Then  Hugo,  both  in  "  Marion  "  and  in 
"  Les  Mise'rables,"  had  gone  a  step  farther  in  his  Ro- 
mantic sympathy,  and  now  Dumas  opened  wide  the 
arms  of  society  to  the  penitent.  It  was  a  time  of 
social  ferment,  when  a  theory  needed  only  to  be  ex- 
travagant to  find  imitators.  For  several  years  the  stage 
abounded  with  these  festering  lilies  until  common- 
sense  returned,  as  we  have  seen,  with  Augier's  "Ma- 
riage  d'Olympe,"  which  taught  a  harder  though  a 
truer  social  philosophy.  But  it  is  not  in  its  social 
ethics  that  the  importance  of  Dumas'  play  lies,  but  in 
its  naturalism,  in  its  presentation  of  present  social 
conditions  and  characters  with  a  reality  that  the  Ro- 
manticists had  not  desired,  nor  the  Neo-Classicists 
approached. 

The  strength  of  this  play  remained  Dumas'  perma- 
nent possession ;  its  ethical  vagaries  were  speedily 
abandoned.  Already  in  "Diane  de  Lys"  the  author 
showed  a  little  of  the  satiric  misogynist,  and  in  the 
henpecked  Taupin  created  a  standing  butt  of  the 
Parisian  humorous  journals,  while  he  was  ready  now 
to  defend  the  integrity  of  the  family  with  a  pistol,  as 
Augier  did  two  years  later  in  "  Olympe,"  which  was  a 
much  stronger  piece  of  work  in  spite  of  this  lame 
conclusion.  But  Dumas  had  now  found  his  vocation. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       373 

All  the  dramas  that  follow  are  written  with  a  purpose 
and  to  prove  some  social  thesis,  the  more  paradoxical 
the  better.  And  that  there  may  be  no  mistake  about 
it,  nearly  all  of  the  thirteen  are  provided  with  prefaces 
of  considerable  length,  where  the  author  takes  the 
spectator  into  his  confidence  and  argues  with  him  in 
easy,  forceful  prose,  —  always,  he  assures  you,  with  per- 
fect frankness,  and  sometimes  perhaps  with  too  little 
restraint,  as  when  in  his  pursuit  of  social  reform  he 
is  eager  to  pull  aside  the  veil  from  body  as  well  as 
mind,  and  degrades  love  to  the  level  of  physiological 
pathology. 

For  woman  —  that  is,  the  baleful  influence  of  modern 
love  —  is  his  perennial  theme,  which  he  twists  and  turns 
and  views  from  every  side.  He  would  eradicate  from 
the  youth  of  France  the  false  sentiment  of  Romantic 
passion  and  chivalrous  love,  and  so  emancipate  the  com- 
ing generation  for  a  more  independent,  virile  develop- 
ment. Like  his  Ami  des  femmes  he  has  "  made  up  his 
mind  never  to  give  his  honor,  heart,  or  life  to  be 
devoured  by  those  charming,  terrible  little  creatures, 
for  whom  we  ruin,  dishonor,  and  kill  ourselves,  and 
whose  sole  occupation  in  the  midst  of  this  universal 
carnage  is  to  dress  now  like  umbrellas  and  now  like 
bells."  This  note  of  warning  is  the  burden  through- 
out. It  is  the  avowed  purpose  of  the  "  Demi-monde," 
"  L'Ami  des  femmes,"  "  Une  Visite  de  noces,"  "  La  Prin- 
cesse  Georges,"  "  La  Femme  de  Claude,"  and  "  L'Stran- 
gere."  It  is  present,  though  masked,  in  "Le  P£re 
prodigue,"  a  half-autobiographical  drama  of  education, 
and  in  "  Le  Fils  naturel,"  a  study  of  illegitimacy.  It 
colors  "  Les  Idees  de  Mme.  Aubray "  of  which  the 
ostensible  theme  is  the  rehabilitation  of  a  fallen  wo- 
man, and  casts  a  faint  shadow  even  on  "  La  Question 


374  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

d'argent,"  that  both  in  subject  and  treatment  suggests 
Augier's  "Effrontes." 

The  first  of  these,  "  Le  Demi-monde,"  had  the  curious 
fortune  to  give  its  name,  a  coinage  of  the  author,  to  a 
class  of  persons  with  whom  it  has  nothing  whatever  to 
do.  His  demi-monde  is  made  up  of  those  who  have 
been  members  of  society,  but  have  abandoned  or  for- 
feited their  place  in  it  without  sinking  to  the  rank  of 
courtesans.  He  tells  us  in  his  preface  how  society's 
first  exile  "  mourned  her  shame  in  secret  till  the  second 
came  to  console  her.  Then,  when  there  were  three, 
they  asked  one  another  to  dinner,  and  when  there  were 
four  they  had  a  contredanse.  Around  them  gathered 
young  girls  who  had  started  in  life  with  a  fault,  false 
widows  .  .  .  and  all  the  women  who  want  to  make 
believe  that  they  are  something  and  do  not  want  to 
appear  what  they  are."  That  is  the  demi-monde,  a 
social  zone  that  Dumas  claimed  to  have  discovered, 
and  certainly  explored  with  great  keenness  and  un- 
flinching realism  in  the  treatment  of  individual  char- 
acters, though  the  construction  of  the  drama  is  open 
to  criticism  and  its  close  is  a  bit  of  legerdemain  unwor- 
thy of  a  serious  dramatic  situation.  Moreover  here, 
as  indeed  in  all  his  plays,  Dumas  treats  the  prejudices 
of  his  hearers  and  the  conventions  of  society  with  a 
persistent  neglect  on  which  no  other  dramatist  would 
venture. 

Perhaps  the  chief  interest  to-day  in  the  stock -gam- 
bling comedy  "  La  Question  d'argent "  is  that  it  marks 
and  illustrates  the  rising  power  of  the  speculative 
plutocracy  during  the  first  decade  of  the  Empire. 
Here  the  humor  is  frankly  comic.  In  the  "  Fils  na- 
turel "  it  is  more  caustic,  differing  in  this,  as  in  the 
pathetic  delicacy  of  the  intrigue  and  the  courageous 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       375 

ingenuity  of  the  close,  from  the  drama  of  Diderot  that 
its  title  and  manner  suggest.  Very  much  the  same 
might  be  said  of  "  Le  Pere  prodigue,"  an  illustration 
of  the  well-worn  maxim  that  "there  is  no  fool  like 
an  old  fool,"  especially  when  the  French  conventional 
marriage  is  in  question.  But  both  of  these  plays  yield 
in  interest  to  a  third  drama  of  character  in  Diderot's 
manner,  "  Les  Ide*es  de  Mme.  Aubray,"  where  we  are 
invited  to  study  the  social  and  matrimonial  eligibility 
of  a  girl  who  has  been  betrayed  into  a  single  repented 
error.  Madame  Aubray  finds  Jeanne  a  desirable  match 
for  her  own  young  hopeful,  Camille.  This  de"noue- 
ment  is  pronounced  by  one  of  the  characters  at  the 
close  to  be  "pretty  steep,"  and  this  seemed  to  be  the 
popular  judgment,  in  spite  of  Dumas'  eloquent  preface, 
where,  however,  it  is  significant  to  note  that  for  the  first 
time  he  lets  the  preacher  get  the  upper  hand  of  the 
playwright,  and  seems  more  anxious  to  commend  his 
social  eccentricity  or  moral  paradox  than  to  prove  the 
excellence  of  the  drama  itself.  This  shifting  of  the 
relation  between  art  and  ethics  is  perpetuated  in  nearly 
all  the  later  plays,  and  thus  gives  Dumas  a  dramatic 
position  that  is  quite  unique. 

The  main  element  in  "  M.  Alphonse,"  for  instance, 
is  an  appeal  to  the  public  to  abandon  one  of  its  most 
deeply  rooted  prejudices.  The  individual  characters 
are  sympathetic,  and  the  play  is  almost  faultless  in 
structure ;  but  these  merits  are  almost  overshadowed 
by  its  perverse  sociology.  We  are  puzzled  rather  than 
convinced  by  this  tale  of  six  years  of  calm  wedded 
life,  followed  by  the  discovery  that  the  wife  has  a 
half -grown  daughter,  whom  the  husband  is  finally 
suffered  to  adopt,  though  not  without  some  competi- 
tion for  the  doubtful  honor. 


376  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Alternating  with  these  dramas  of  characters  or 
states,  are  four  plays  that  continue  the  investigation 
begun  in  "  Demi-monde,"  and  already  ably  treated  in 
Augier's  "  Lionnes  pauvres."  There  is,  however,  a 
cynical  tone  in  the  treatment  of  marriage,  both  in 
"L'Ami  des  fenimes,"  which  an  outraged  spectator  is 
said  to  have  proclaimed  "  disgusting,"  and  "  Une  Visite 
de  noces,"  which  its  author  has  aptly  characterized  as 
"  a  psycho-philosophical  chemical  analysis."  And  this 
makes  rather  disheartening  reading  of  both  these  pessi- 
mistic pictures  of  the  dust  and  ashes  of  relations  that, 
as  the  heroine  of  the  latter  play  remarks,  "began  be- 
cause I  was  bored,  and  ended  because  he  bored  me." 
"  La  Princesse  Georges  "  was  more  ambitious  and  more 
healthy;  but  even  this  needed  a  pistol-shot  to  clear 
the  air  at  the  close,  which  was,  again,  a  lame  and  impo- 
tent conclusion.  Dumas  resorted  to  it  once  more,  how- 
ever, in  "  La  Femme  de  Claude,"  whose  thesis  is  that 
husbands  should  kill  their  adulterous  wives,  —  a  view 
that  the  author  took  so  much  to  heart  as  to  defend  it 
in  an  eloquent  preface,  and  in  a  pamphlet,  "  L'Homme- 
Femme,"  which  amused  many  and  convinced  none.  It 
may  be  observed,  however,  that  the  doctrine  is  only 
that  of  Augier's  "Olympe"  in  its  baldest  form. 

Men  might  regret  Dumas'  ethical  eccentricities,  but 
they  could  not  close  their  eyes  to  his  talent,  and  in 
1875  he  was  elected  to  the  Academy.  As  a  conse- 
quence of  this,  his  next  dramatic  sermon  was  written 
for  the  Theatre  Francais  and  for  Sarah  Bernhardt, 
while  the  previous  plays  had  been  produced  at  the 
less  serious  Gymnase.  In  "  L'Etrangfere "  we  are 
still  in  the  demi-monde,  but  the  whole  is  a  curious 
pastiche  of  Augier's  "Poirier."  Mrs.  Clarkson,  "he 
"  stranger,"  is  in  this  drama  what  Madame  de 


THE  EVOLUTON  0¥  THE  DKAMA.        377 

Montjaye  was  to  Augier's,  Antoinette  is  Catherine, 
Gaston  is  Septmonts,  Poirier  very  nearly  Moriceau. 
The  god-father  Verdelet  becomes  here  the  modest  lover 
Gerard,  which,  to  be  sure,  adds  an  element  of  complex- 
ity to  the  situation.  One  should  note,  too,  that  with 
Dumas  both  the  wife  and  the  rival  are  more  prominent 
than  with  Augier,  a  difference  that  reflects  the  social 
changes  of  twenty  years  of  democratic  life.  Augier's 
touch  is  more  delicate,  and  his  play  is  better  con- 
structed. Dumas'  is  more  versatile  and  realistic,  but 
it  has  far  too  much  sermonizing,  and  again  we  have 
a  violent  denouement.  Catherine's  unworthy  lover 
cumbers  the  stage,  but  the  deus  ex  machina  of  a  fatal 
duel  is  a  trite  and  unsatisfactory  solution. 

This  play  closes  the  collected  edition  of  Dumas' 
works ;  and  though  he  afterward  returned  to  the 
stage  at  rare  intervals,  he  touched  no  new  chord. 
Indeed,  "  La  Princesse  de  Bagdad "  is  distinguished 
among  the  author's  dramas  by  a  quite  peculiar  lack 
of  good  taste  and  common-sense ; *  "  Denise "  is  a 
revamping  of  "  M.  Alphonse  ; "  and  "  Francillon,"  while 
it  shows  a  marked  advance  on  these  in  the  delineation 
of  character,  especially  of  the  three  men  in  the  drama, 
shrinks  from  the  full  force  of  the  situation  it  creates. 
We  are  allowed  to  suppose  that  the  wife  has  resorted 
to  the  lex  talionis  to  secure  her  husband's  conjugal 
fidelity,  and  are  ill  edified  to  find  that  she  has  been 
shamming,  so  that  the  problem  in  which  it  was  sought 
to  interest  us  suddenly  ceases  to  exist.  Popular  as 
"  Francillon  "  has  been  at  home  and  abroad,  it  lacks 
classic  dignity,  a  fault  shared  in  greater  or  less  degree 
by  all  the  dramatic  work  of  Dumas. 

For  from  first  to  last  the  wit  of  these  plays  is  that 
1  See  the  elaborate  analysis  in  "  Revue  bleue,"  April,  1895. 


378  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

of  the  society  they  represent.  It  raises  a  laugh,  but 
the  laugh  is  not  a  kindly  one.  The  language,  too,  is 
that  of  the  salons,  full  of  neologisms,  and  in  the  earlier 
plays  of  solecisms,  though  the  Academician  has  re- 
moved these  from  the  collected  works.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  not  the  language  of  everybody.  It  has  a 
'wonderfully  individual  concision  and  clearness ;  it  is 
"  all  muscles,  nerves,  and  action."  Passing  from  form 
to  substance,  Dumas  appears  both  more  and  less  of  a 
realist  than  Augier,  —  more,  if  by  realism  we  mean  the 
daring  that  seeks  veils  in  order  to  rend  them,  that  has 
not  only  the  courage  but  the  yearning  to  "  tell  it  all ;  " 
less,  if  by  realism  we  mean  the  presentation  of  nature 
in  its  rounded  completeness.  The  former  represents 
the  practice,  if  not  the  theory,  of  the  self-styled  Natu- 
ralists, so  that  it  is  not  strange  that  Zola  l  should  hail 
him  as  a  forerunner,  though  he  regretted  his  advocacy 
of  le  theatre  utile  and  the  didactic  tone  in  which  this 
cynical  painter  of  manners  posed  as  a  shepherd  of  souls. 
But  Dumas  was  quite  too  much  of  an  artist  to  accept 
the  theory  or  care  for  the  praise  of  the  school  of 
"human  documents." 

In  Dumas  there  was  a  double  nature.  He  shows  us 
now  the  visionary  social  reformer,  now  the  sardonic 
Uagueur.  No  one  can  tell  the  measure  of  his  sincerity 
when  he  offers  his  "  Demi-monde  "  as  a  title  to  the 
Monthyon  prize.  But  his  moralizing,  whether  sincere 
or  not,  has  the  effect  of  making  his  characters  abstract 
types,  a  pitfall  that  he  saw  and  tried  to  avoid  in 
"  Francillon."  Of  this,  the  most  striking  instance  is 
to  be  found  in  the  apocalyptic  vision  of  the  Beast  in 
the  famous  preface  to  "  La  Femme  de  Claude."  These 
types  seem  sometimes  to  get  possession  of  the  drama- 
1  Roman  experimental,  p.  134. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       379 

tist,  so  that  he,  who  can  create  so  readily  when  he  will, 
repeats  characters  over  and  over,  and  with  declared 
intent.  He  has  told  us  himself  that  Gaston  in  the 
"  Dame  aux  came'lias,"  Maximilien  of  "  Diane,"  and 
Olivier  of  the  "  Demi-monde  "  are  studies  of  the  same 
original,  who  reappears  also  as  Kene'  in  "  La  Question 
d'argent,"  and  as  M.  de  Eyons  in  "  L'Ami  des  fenimes ; " 
and  as  though  this  were  not  enough,  we  recognize  the 
familiar  face  in  the  Eoger  of  the  unacknowledged 
"  Danicheffs." *  So,  again,  Clemenceau's  wife,  Iza,  is 
the  Countess  de  Terremonde  of  "  Princesse  Georges  " 
and  the  Valentine  of  "Demi-monde,"  as  well  as  the 
incarnate  "  Beast "  of  the  "  Femme  de  Claude."  But,  for 
all  this,  no  French  dramatist  of  that  day  is  so  purposeful 
or  forceful  as  Dumas  fils. 

But  if  Augier  and  Dumas  learned  much  from  Scribe, 
the  mantle  of  his  popularity  fell  to  Sardou,  a  play- 
wright of  more  tact  and  technical  skill,  but  of  far 
less  genius  than  either.  Sardou  was  a  Parisian,2  who, 
already  in  1849,  when  a  student  of  medicine,  had  es- 
sayed dramatic  composition,  from  which  family  mis- 
fortunes soon  forced  him  to  seek  a  livelihood.  But 
few  who  have  achieved  fame  and  fortune  have  had  a 

1  Matthews,  p.  147,  uses  the  same  obvious  illustrations. 

2  Born  1831,  died  1908.     Chief  dramas  :   Les  Pattes  de  mouche, 
1861 ;  Nos  intimes,  1861;  Les  Ganaches,  1862;  La  Famille  Benoiton, 
1865;  Nosbons  villageois,  1866;  Seraphine,  1868;  Patrie,  1869;  Fer- 
nande,  1870;  Le  Roi  Garotte,  1871 ;  Ragabas,  1872  ;  Oncle  Sam,  1873  ; 
La  Haine,  1874;  Dora,  1877;  Les  Bourgeois  du  pont  d'Arcy,  1878; 
Daniel  Rochat,  1880;  Divorcous,  1880;  Odette,  1881;  Fedora,  1882; 
Theodora,  1884  ;  Georgette,  1885  ;  La  Tosca,  1887  ;  Thermidor,  1891  ; 
Madame  Sans-Gene,  1893;  La  Gismonda,  1894;  Marcelle,  1895;  Spiri- 
tisme,  1897;  Pamela,  1898;  Robespierre,  1899;  Le  Dante,  1903;  La 
Sorciere,  1903;  La  Piste,  his  fifty-fifth  drama,  1906.     For  criticism  see 
the  already  cited  works  of  Lacour,  Doumic,  and  Matthews. 


380  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

harder  struggle  up  the  hill  of  difficulty  than  he.  Even 
when  the  kindness  of  Paul  FeVal,  a  writer  of  far  infe- 
rior genius,  had  procured  him  a  hearing,  it  was  only 
to  be  hissed.  Yet  the  repeated  refusals  of  his  dramas 
did  not  discourage  his  literary  ambition.  He  gave 
private  lessons,  did  hack  work  for  the  "  Biographic 
ge'ne'rale,"  and  wrote  stories  with  tireless  industry. 
Finally,  on  the  strength  of  his  repeated  failures,  he 
married,  and  his  marriage  was  the  "  Open  sesame  "  of 
his  success ;  for  it  brought  him  the  friendship  of  the 
actress  Ddjazet  and  of  Vanderbuch,  with  whom  he 
wrote  several  plays  that  brought  money  to  De'jazet's 
theatre  and  the  long-craved  recognition  to  Sardou. 

The  stage  of  Paris  was  now  open  to  him,  and  over 
it  he  led  a  swift  succession  of  pieces,  some  twenty  in 
five  years.  But  his  first  real  success  was  won  by  "  Les 
Pattes  de  mouche,"  a  comedy  based  on  Poe's  "Pur- 
loined Letter,"  which  Baudelaire's  translation  had  re- 
cently made  familiar  to  French  readers.1  Here  the 
intrigue  revolves  around  a  letter  that  is  lost  and  found, 
put  to  the  most  various  uses,  and  at  last  sets  all  right 
again.  It  was  a  shop-worn  device ;  but  Sardou  has 
revamped  it  in  "  Fernande,"  in  "  Dora,"  and  in  "  Fedora," 
and  Pailleron  has  borrowed  it  for  his  "  Monde  ou  Ton 
s'ennuie."  In  "Les  Pattes  de  mouche"  the  plot  is 
perhaps  too  involved ;  but  it  was  less  for  this  than  for 
its  brilliant  dialogue  and  as  a  genre  picture  of  modern 
social  life  that  it  won  lasting  success,  and  set  up  a 
model  for  the  inexhaustible  fertility  of  its  author.  He 
had  felt  the  bitterness  of  poverty  and  of  popular  in- 
difference. Now  that  he  had  overcome  both,  he  set 
himself  to  win  notoriety  and  wealth.  To  please  be- 

1  Poe's  story  has  recrossed  the  Atlantic,  disguised  as  "  A  Scrap  of 
Paper,"  essentially  a  translation  of  Sardou's  play. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       381 

came  his  aim,  and  he  hit  his  mark  with  almost  unfail- 
ing sureness.  But  the  barometer  of  the  box-office 
gave  the  fairest  augury  when  his  satire  of  society  was 
buoyant  and  keen.  His  public  were  willing  to  laugh  at 
their  foibles,  but  it  must  be  with  a  light  heart ;  and  so 
Sardou  is  never  serious  or  stern,  with  a  single  excep- 
tion that  proves  the  rule.  The  incompetence  of  the 
French  democracy  was  hateful  to  his  peculiar  public, 
and  that  hate  is  reflected  in  the  bitterness  of  "Les 
Ganaches  "  and  of  "  Eagabas." 

The  great  mass  of  Sardou's  early  plays  has  passed 
out  of  sight,1  but  "  La  Famille  Benoiton "  marks  a 
growth  in  Naturalism,  and  a  willingness  to  touch  the 
social  questions  of  the  day,  though  less  seriously  than 
Augier,  with  whose  "  Lionnes  pauvres  "  this  series  of 
realistic  Parisian  pictures  may  be  fruitfully  contrasted. 
The  galled  jades  may  have  winced,  but  they  must  have 
smiled.  Sardou's  satire  was  never  of  a  kind  to  offend 
his  patrons,  and  he  had  already  won  their  sympathy 
with  a  humorous  attack  on  the  democratic  opposi- 
tion to  the  Empire.  He  was  a  politician  for  revenue 
not  for  reform,  though  no  doubt  he  sympathized  with 
the  Bonapartists  from  conviction  as  well  as  policy. 
His  "  Ganaches  "  brought  him  the  coveted  cross  of  the 
Legion  of  Honor ;  for  the  all-powerful  Due  de  Morny 
had,  like  Richelieu,  a  weakness  for  the  stage,  and  a 
Napoleonic  author  was  a  genus  rare  enough  to  be  cul- 
tivated with  care.  He  returned  the  compliment  with 
"  Nos  bons  villageois,"  an  urban  satire  on  country 
politicians ;  but  both  of  these  political  plays  were  cast 

1  "  Nos  intimes,"  once  very  popular  and  familiar  to  English  readers 
under  the  various  names,  "  Friends  and  Foes,"  "  Bosom  Friends,"  and 
"  Peril,"  deserves  mention  as  a  clever  satire  on  the  busybodies  of  false 
friendship. 


382  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

in  the  shade  by  "  Rabagas,"  a  bold  caricature  of  Gam- 
betta,  where  also  Napoleon  III.  and  Garibaldi  appear 
under  transparent  veils.  Here  the  Bonapartist,  disap- 
pointed at  the  unexpected  stability  of  the  Third  Re- 
public,  poured  out  the  vials  of  his  scornful  hate  on  the 
new  regime  and  the  demagogues  who  typified  to  him 
the  national  decay.  Again  he  returned  to  this  Quixotic 
charge  in  "  Les  Bourgeois  du  pont  d'Arcy,"  a  rather 
mediocre  domestic  drama,  in  which  politics  form  the 
redeeming  feature.  It  was  two  months  after  the  pro- 
duction of  this  play  (1878)  that  Sardou  took  his  seat 
among  the  dramatists  of  the  Academy,  and  that  sturdy 
democrat,  Charles  Blanc,  who  welcomed  him,  took  him 
pleasantly  to  task  for  these  incursions  into  "  a  world 
that  was  not  his."  But  nothing  daunted  at  this  repub- 
lican warning  that  the  spirit  of  the  empire  was  dead, 
at  least  for  that  generation,  Sardou  ventured,  in  1880, 
to  draw  on  his  head  the  more  rancorous  rage  of  the 
clergy.  His  "  Daniel  Rochat "  attacked  what  he  re- 
garded as  the  regrettable  prejudice  that  still  couples 
a  religious  ceremony  with  the  civil  marriage.  But  it 
is  only  charity  to  leave  this  play  in  the  limbo  into 
which  it  almost  immediately  fell. 

And  now,  piqued  by  this  check,  and  jealous  of  his 
popularity,  Sardou  hastened  to  efface  the  impression  of 
"  Rochat,"  and  to  place  himself  in  accord  with  the 
prejudices  and  the  frivolity  of  his  auditors  by  the 
witty  and  not  too  scrupulous  farce,  "  Divorgons,"  which 
in  three  hundred  performances  brought  the  Palais 
Royal  theatre  $300,000.  The  reform  in  the  divorce 
laws  of  1816,  finally  effected  in  1884,  was  already 
vigorously  urged  in  1880,  and  Sardou  handled  it 
deftly  so  as  to  please  his  public  by  a  sane  conclusion 
and  a  healthy  satire  of  the  long  line  of  dramas  that, 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       383 

since  "  Antony,"  had  coquetted  with  adultery  and  half 
condoned  it.  "  Divorc,ons "  may  be  only  a  popgun 
beside  the  heavy  artillery  of  Dumas  and  Augier ;  but 
it  is  much  to  make  people  laugh  heartily  in  a  good 
cause,  to  make  the  husband  whose  honor  is  threatened 
a  subject  of  admiration  not  of  pity,  —  in  short,  to  make 
respectability  more  attractive  than  the  primrose  path. 

Meantime  Sardou  had  been  developing  from  the 
social  and  political  satire  the  drama  of  states  or  char- 
acters, in  which  he  studies  a  single  person,  usually  a 
woman,  rather  than  a  class  or  group.  As  early  as 
1866  he  had  attempted  a  study  of  feminine  religious 
hypocrisy  in  a  piece  that  he  would  have  called  "  The 
Devotee."  But  the  imperial  censors,  being  disposed, 
like  the  Puritans  of  Hudibras,  to  "  atone  for  sins  they 
were  inclined  to  by  damning  those  they  had  no  mind 
to,"  objected,  and  so  the  play  appeared  under  the  less 
distinctive  name  of  its  heroine  Seraphine,  a  lady  of 
fashion  who  is  under  such  conviction  of  sin  that  she 
longs  to  have  her  daughter  make  vicarious  satisfaction 
for  it  by  entering  a  nunnery.  A  somewhat  similar 
study  of  character  is  "  Fernande,"  a  rather  trite  story 
of  the  lily  on  the  dunghill,  Fernande  in  the  gambling- 
house  of  her  mother.  The  girl  loves  and  marries  a 
man  who,  through  no  fault  of  hers,  is  ignorant  of  the 
tainted  environment  of  his  bride.  The  situation  is 
Diderot's,  but  the  delightful  ingenuousness  with  which 
Fernande  regains  the  love  of  the  now  undeceived  and 
outraged  husband  produced  so  telling  an  effect  that 
Sardou  sought  to  repeat  it  in  "Dora,"  our  English 
"Diplomacy,"  where  also  he  played  skilfully  on  the 
morbid  dread  of  spies  that  has  set  all  France  quivering 
at  intervals  since  the  revelations  of  1870.  To  this 
same  class  belong  "  Odette "  and  "  Georgette,"  studies 


384  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

of  maternal  love  in  otherwise  frail  women.  These  sug- 
gest the  subjects  of  Duinas,  but  they  are  both  accom- 
panied by  spectacular  effects  such  as  have  come  to  be 
the  peculiar  mark  of  the  latest  phase  of  Sardou's  versa- 
tile genius. 

This  tact  and  boldness  in  scenic  sensation  was 
revealed  in  all  its  glory  in  "  Fe'dora,"  where  the  mys- 
terious activity  of  the  Kussian  Nihilists  is  drawn  upon 
for  a  thrilling  drama  of  crime.  But  "  Fedora  "  is  far 
more  than  a  sensational  spectacle,  it  is  a  drama  of 
wonderful  energy;  effects  crowd  on  one  another  in 
such  quick  succession  that  the  spectator  has  no  time 
to  reflect  on  their  probability  as  he  sees  the  heroine 
caught  in  her  own  snares.  To  her  the  other  charac- 
ters are  wholly  subordinated,  partly  because  this  lies 
in  the  nature  of  the  drama  of  states,  partly  because 
like  the  later  plays  it  was  written  for  Sarah  Bernhardt, 
who  naturally  desired  no  rival,  and  so  has  done  much 
to  limit  the  expression  of  Sardou's  genius. 

These  later  plays  are  in  the  main  historical  and 
spectacular.  He  had  attempted  this  style  already  with 
success  in  "Patrie,"  a  drama  of  the  Spanish  Nether- 
lands, dedicated  to  Mr.  Motley,  and  regarded  by  an 
American  critic  as  "  the  firmest  and  finest  specimen  of 
Sardou's  skill."  He  repeated  the  venture  in  "  La  Haine," 
and  obviously  selected  the  subject  of  "The'odora" 
more  for  its  scenic  than  for  its  dramatic  qualities, 
though  into  the  strange  splendor  of  his  Byzantine 
court  the  author  has  introduced  a  quick  succession  of 
emotional  effects  by  the  jealous  violence  of  Justinian 
and  the  imperious  will  of  her  who  had  risen  from  the 
circus  to  the  throne.  Taken  as  a  whole,  however,  this 
piece,  even  more  than  "Fe'dora,"  is  addressed  to  the 
eye  rather  than  to  the  ear,  to  the  ear  rather  than 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF  THE   DRAMA.  385 

to  the  mind.  There  are  probably  but  few  scenes  that 
would  repay  a  reader's  study,  a  sure  sign  that  we  have 
passed  beyond  the  sphere  of  serious  dramatic  literature. 
Since  this  is  equally  true  of  all  the  plays  that 
followed,  even  to  the  last,  they  may  be  briefly  dis-. 
missed  here,  while  in  regard  to  certain  travesties  for 
the  foreign  market  utter  silence  is  golden.1  Such 
work  must  be  content  to  measure  its  success  by  com- 
mercial standards ;  and  so  measured  these  plays  are 
almost  unrivalled.  Still  in  nearly  every  drama  Sardou 
will  give  to  one  or  two  scenes  a  literary  elaboration 
that  does  not  let  us  forget  his  power.  Such  will  occur 
to  every  spectator  of  "  La  Tosca,"  a  curious  attempt 
to  combine  the  interest  of  "  Fedora "  with  that  of 
"  Marion  de  Lorme ; "  they  recur  in  "  Thermidor,"  a 
political  spectacle  of  the  Eeign  of  Terror,  where  Sardou 
shows  himself  still  faithful  to  the  position  of  "  Raga- 
bas;"  they  can  be  found  in  "Madame  Sans-G§ne," 
which  is  otherwise  little  more  than  an  adaptation  of 
the  earlier  work  of  Moreau  to  the  revival  of  interest 
in  the  Napoleonic  legend,  and  they  characterize 
also  "  Robespierre  "  and  "  Gisinonda,"  where  Constanti- 
nople under  the  brief  rule  of  the  Latin  emperors 
offers  a  picturesque  contrast  between  the  mediaeval 
West  and  the  still  Greek  Byzantium.  Here  the  wily 
Sardou  dazzles  the  auditors  with  the  most  gorgeous 
spectacle  ever  attempted  in  France,  while  he  tickles 
democratic  ears  that  were  offended  by  "Thermidor" 
with  the  triumph  of  a  parvenu,  the  denunciation  of 

1  The  curious  may  examine  "  Oncle  Sam,"  whose  only  interest  lies 
in  the  monumental  silliness  of  its  ignorance;  "Andrea,"  originally 
produced  in  New  York  as  "  Agnes  ;  "  or  "  Le  Crocodile,"  that  in  spite 
of  some  political  spice  is  hardly  up  to  the  level  of  a  Drury-Lane 
pantomime. 

25 


386  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

papal  intrigue,  and  a  little  fillip  of  irreligion  in  a  few 
well-placed  speeches. 

One  will  hardly  sum  up  better  the  total  impression 
of  Sardou's  versatile  genius  than  to  call  him  with 
Lanson  "an  eminent  vaudevillist."  Like  Scribe  he 
imported  into  the  serious  drama  only  the  taste  for 
sensational  and  spectacular  effects  that  tends  to  corrupt 
the  stage  and  to  make  it  artificial  and  insincere.  Like 
Scribe  he  was  an  artist  for  art,  a  handicraftsman  with 
no  higher  purpose  than  to  fill  the  theatre  and  his 
pockets.  With  his  finger  on  the  public  pulse  he  had 
an  instinct  to  divine  the  popular  heart,  to  seem  all 
things  to  all  men,  to  praise  Haussmann  in  "  Les 
Ganaches,"  and  to  damn  him  in  "  Maison  neuve,"  to 
turn  every  popular  enthusiasm  and  prejudice  to  pri- 
vate account,  to  live  in  the  belief  that  "the  voice 
of  the  people  is  the  voice  of  God."  In  the  evolution 
of  the  drama  he  is  the  natural  product  of  literary 
democracy.  His  frequent  borrowings 1  might  be  for- 
given him,  but  he  will  not  live  because  his  genius,  like 
Scribe's,  is  insincere. 

The  great  strength  of  his  work,  apart  from  its  stage 
setting,  is  its  lively  dialogue,  that  in  spite  of  its 
brilliancy  never  ceases  to  appear  natural,  and  after 
this  his  skill  in  dramatic  suspense.  These  he  is  apt 
to  employ  alternately,  for  he  does  not  waste  his  pow- 
der. He  will  make  his  hearers  laugh  for  two  acts, 
and  then  bring  up  the  fresh  reserve  force  of  his  in- 
trigue to  hold  them  breathless  for  the  last  three.  He 
was  more  free  in  the  use  of  slang  even  than  Dumas, 
and  did  not  scorn  to  enliven  his  Parisian  dialogue  with 
puns  and  parodied  quotations,  chiefly  from  Hugo.  Of 
course  his  dramas  have  a  happy  ending,  except  where 
1  For  instances  see  Matthews,  1.  c.  p.  186. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       387 

the  public  demanded  an  artistic  death-scene  from  the 
genial  Bernhardt,  when  he  was  ready  to  make  a  facile 
concession  to  the  box-office.  And  for  the  same  reason 
Sardou  was  always  careful  to  place  himself  on  the  safe 
side  in  morals,  on  the  side  of  the  family  and  the 
philistine  bourgeois.  He  was  especially  gallant  to  the 
ladies.  "In  my  pieces,"  he  said,  "they  always  have 
the  best  part,  —  that  of  goodness,  tenderness,  and  devo- 
tion." If  he  had  not  the  conviction  of  Augier  he  had 
not  the  skepticism  of  Dumas.  Instinct  and  interest 
combined  to  make  him  the  most  frankly  commercial 
of  modern  playwrights,  a  clever  salesman  of  his  wit, 
the  true  successor  of  Scribe,  "with  double  portion  of 
his  father's  art." 

Augier,  Dumas,  and  Sardou  are  by  universal  con- 
sent the  great  playwrights  of  the  last  generation;  nor 
did  any  of  their  fellows  contribute  essentially  to  the 
evolution  of  the  art,  save  the  Naturalistic  iconoclasts 
whose  excursions  into  the  theatrical  domain  had  more 
negative  than  positive  results.  But  before  we  speak 
of  these,  there  are  several  men  whose  work  did  so 
much  to  preserve  the  supremacy  of  the  French  stage 
in  Europe  that  they  should  not  be  passed  unnoticed 
here.  Of  these  the  most  interesting  is  Labiche 
whose  dramatic  career  presents  an  interest  that  is 
quite  unique.  Popular  almost  from  the  first,  his 
higher  qualities  were  not  appreciated  by  the  critics  till 
he  had  withdrawn  from  active  literary  life  to  the  dig- 
nified leisure  so  dear  to  the  French  heart ;  and  it  was 
from  his  country-house  in  Normandy  that  he  was  called 
to  take  his  seat  in  the  French  Academy,  the  highest 
honor  that  France  has  to  bestow  on  her  men  of  intellect. 

Labiche  was  born  on  May  5,  1815,  in  the  midst  of 
the  Hundred  Days  of  Napoleon's  desperate  attempt  to 


388  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

regain  his  throne.  Like  his  friend  Augier  and  several 
other  of  his  dramatic  associates,  he  studied  for  the 
bar ;  but  this  proved  distasteful  to  him,  and  at  twenty 
he  began  his  literary  career  with  stories  in  the  news- 
papers, which  he  followed  up,  three  years  later,  with  a 
novel  and  his  first  drama,  "M.  de  Coyllin,"  written 
with  the  double  collaboration  of  Michel  and  Lefranc. 
Though  this  play  had  very  small  success,  the  stage 
fascinated  him,  and  for  nearly  forty  years  (1838-1876) 
he  continued  to  pour  out  a  succession  of  farces  and 
comedies,  of  which  only  the  best  are  gathered  in  the 
ten  volumes  of  his  so-called  "  Theatre  complet." 

In  1876,  anticipating  the  waning  of  his  popularity, 
he  retired  to  Normandy,  wealthy,  but  with  no  prospect 
of  enduring  fame.  He  seemed  to  leave  no  gap  behind 
in  the  dramatic  world.  Fortunately,  however,  he  car- 
ried with  him  the  friendship  of  Augier,  who,  while 
visiting  him  some  months  after,  fell  to  reading  on  an 
idle  day  some  of  his  friend's  comedies,  and  found  as 
much  to  admire  in  them  as  in  their  author.  Charmed 
with  his  discovery,  he  persuaded  Labiche  to  publish  a 
collected  edition  of  his  plays,  for  which  he  furnished  a 
warm  preface.  Others  —  among  them  Sarcey,  the  dra- 
matic autocrat  of  Paris  —  chimed  in  the  chorus  of  praise, 
and  in  1879  no  one  found  it  presumptuous  that  he 
whose  departure  had  not  left  a  ripple  on  the  surface  of 
literary  Paris  should  return  as  a  candidate  for  the 
Academy,  which  in  these  latter  days  has  been  pecu- 
liarly cordial  to  playwrights,  as  though  wishing  to 
make  honorable  amends  for  the  exclusion  of  Beaumar- 
chais  and  Moliere.1  Labiche  was  made  an  Acade- 

1  His  dramatic  colleagues  in  the  Academy  of  1880  were  Hugo, 
Augier,  Dumas  fils,  Feuillet,  Saudeau,  Sardou,  making,  with  Labiche, 
more  than  a  sixth  of  the  Forty  Immortals. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.       389 

mician    in    1880 ;  but    he    could  not  be   tempted   to 
resume  literary  work,  and  died  January  23,  1888. 

All  the  best  qualities  of  Labiche's  work  l  are  con- 
tained in  his  "  Voyage  de  M.  Perrichon."  While  he  is 
always  witty,  he  seldom  holds  up  so  true  or  so  polished 
a  mirror  to  the  foibles  of  human  nature  as  in  this  com- 
edy, though  the  very  exuberance  of  his  humor  some- 
times hides  its  truth,  as  it  does  that  of  Beaumarchais. 
M.  Lemoine  said,  in  welcoming  Labiche  to  the  Acad- 
emy, that,  however  light  or  venturesome  some  of  his 
plays  might  be,  they  were  never  immoral  because  they 
were  never  sentimental.  But  "  Perrichon "  can  be 
accepted  with  even  less  reserve  than  the  majority  of 
his  collected  works.  Here  the  humor  is  rather  that 
of  situation  and  of  character  than  of  what  Butler  calls 
"cat  and  puss"  dialogue,  the  classic  stichomachia,  or 
that  riotous  fancy  that,  as  Mr.  Matthews  puts  it, 
"grins  through  a  horse-collar."  Behind  the  mask  of 
caricature,  the  attentive  reader  will  not  fail  to  see, 
with  Augier,  delicacy  of  tone,  accuracy  of  expression, 
and  an  unflagging  vivacity.  "  Seek,"  the  same  writer 
continues,  "  among  the  highest  works  of  our  generation 
for  a  comedy  of  more  profound  observation  than  '  Per- 
richon.' .  .  .  And  Labiche  has  ten  plays  of  this  strength 
in  his  repertory."  The  number  is,  perhaps,  a  little  too 
great;  but  while  his  farces  and  extravaganzas  won 

1  For  critical  appreciation  of  Labiche's  comedies,  see  Augier's  pref- 
ace to  the  The'atre  complet;  Nouvelle  Revue,  Oct.  1,  1880;  Dumas, 
Entr'actes,  iii.  336;  and,  best  of  all,  Matthews,  French  Dramatists, 
224  sqq.,  who  has  traced  the  well-known  English  farces,  "  Box  and 
Cox,"  "Little  Toddlekins,"  and  "  The  Phenomenon  in  a  Smock  Frock," 
to  Labiche,  and  has  found  "  Papa  Perrichon  "  in  the  repertory  of  the 
Boston  Museum.  See  also  the  introduction  to  the  author's  edition  of 
"Perrichon"  (Boston:  Heath)  for  a  fuller  criticism  of  that  play,  to- 
gether with  much  that  is  said  above. 


390  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

their  meed  of  ephemeral  praise,  in  "Perrichon"  and 
four  or  five  other  plays,  Labiche  rose  to  pure  comedy, 
and  set  up  in  the  domain  of  literature  a  work  whose 
social  philosophy  gives  it  enduring  life,  and  makes  him, 
as  Dumas  says,  "one  of  the  finest  and  frankest  of 
comic  poets  since  Plautus,  and  perhaps  the  only  one 
to  be  compared  with  him." l 

In  this  lighter  vein  of  comedy  Meilhac  and  Hale'vy  2 
achieved  great  distinction  during  the  Second  Empire, 
an  eminence  that  they  seemed  in  later  days  willing 
to  exchange  for  a  humbler  place  in  the  legitimate 
drama.  To  the  generation  that  is  passing  away  they 
were  known  "  from  China  to  Peru  "  as  the  composers 
of  Offenbach's  most  popular  librettos,  and  admired 
equally  at  home  as  the  authors  of  farces  of  more  than 
usual  levity.  Their  first  great  success  was  "  La  Belle 
Helene,"  which  caught  admirably  the  mocking  blague 
of  Cre*mieux'  "  Orphic  aux  enfers,"  a  strain  continued 
in  "  Barbe-bleue,"  "  La  Grande  duchesse  "  and  "  Car- 
men." It  was  not  till  toward  the  close  of  the  Empire 
that  they  essayed  the  serious  drama  in  "  Frou-Frou  " 
(1869),  one  of  the  greatest  theatrical  successes  of  the 
century  and  wholly  different  from  the  farcical  work 
that  had  preceded  it.  The  earlier  portions  suggest 

i  To  this  higher  range  of  comedy  belong  "  Celimare  le  Bien-Aime'," 
"Le  Plus  heureux  des  trois,"  "Cagnotte,"  and  "Moi,  "  of  which  the 
two  latter  may  he  commended  for  general  reading.  Among  the  hest 
of  the  farces  are  "  Poudre  aux  yeux  "  and  "  La  Grammaire." 

2  Meilhac  (b.  1831,  d.  1888)  began  writing  for  the  stage  in  1855, 
and  was  closely  associated  with  Hale'vy  from  1861  to  1881.  His  best 
independent  pieces  are  "  La  Vertu  de  Celimene,"  1861,  and  "De'core'," 
1888;  his  last,  "  Grosse  fortune,"  1896. 

Hale'vy  (b.  1834,  d.  1908)  turned  after  1881  to  novelistic  and  satiric 
sketches,  e.  g.,  L'Abbe'  Constantin,  1882  ;  La  Famille  Cardinal,  1883; 
Criquette,  1883.  Both  were  members  of  the  Academy.  Matthews,  1.  c., 
has  a  chapter  on  their  joint  dramatic  work,  which  is  collected  in 
Thefitre  de  Meilhac  et  Hale'vy,  8  vols.,  1900-1902. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   THE   DRAMA.  391 

the  seriousness  of  Augier  as  they  lay  bare  the  results 
to  moral  character  of  the  restless  grasping  for  pleasure 
that  marked  the  social  life  of  the  declining  Empire, 
and  show  how  it  corrodes  heart  and  conscience.  To- 
ward the  close  the  sternness  of  satire  yields  to  melo- 
dramatic emotion  and  an  elegiac  note  predominates  in 
the  final  scene,  where  the  poor  crushed  butterfly  Frou- 
Frou,  racked  by  consumption,  returns  to  her  husband, 
embraces  her  child,  and  dies  on  the  stage,  a  concession, 
like  those  of  Sardou,  to  the  demands  of  the  great 
actress  Bernhardt  Other  ventures  of  these  dioscuri 
of  realistic  or  farcical  satire  are  "Fanny  Lear," 
"  Tricoche  et  Cacolet,"  and  "  La  Boule ; "  but  these 
reflect  rather  the  violent  sensational  method  of 
"  La  Dame  aux  came'lias  "  than  the  individuality  of 
Meilhac  and  Hale'vy,  that  best  shows  its  sparkling 
effervescence  and  genuine  dramatic  force  in  such  little 
one-act  plays  as  "  Eeveillon "  or  the  unsavory  but 
clever  "  Toto  chez  Tata." 

In  more  recent  years  a  novel  turn  has  been  given  to 
social  satire  by  Pailleron's  u  Monde  ou  Ton  s'ennuie " 
(1881),  one  of  the  best  comedies  of  its  generation  and 
one  of  the  historic  successes  of  the  Theatre  Frangais, 
though  it  is  the  only  important  work  of  its  author.1 
"  The  World  of  Boredom  "  is  that  of  Molifcre's  "  Fenimes 
savantes  "  as  they  appear  in  our  day,  with  their  affecta- 
tion of  learning,  their  scholarly  and  aesthetic  pretensions, 
masking  an  active  intrigue  for  government  promotions 
and  official  distinctions.  It  added  to  the  vogue  of  the 
play  that  the  characters  were  more  photographic  than 

1  Pailleron  (b.  1834,  d.  1899)  published  several  volumes  of  poetry 
and  dramatic  trifles.  "  Les  Cabotins  "  (1894)  is  of  a  higher  order,  and 
a  single  scene  of  "  Le  Monde  ou  Ton  s'amuse  (1868)  is  often  cited  as  a 
masterpiece  of  stage-craft.  His  last  plays  were  "  Mieux  vaut  douceur," 
1897,  and  "  Et  violence,"  1907. 


392  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

typical.  The  triteness  of  the  plot  was  readily  forgiven 
for  the  satiric  verve  of  the  dialogue  and  the  piquant 
delicacy  of  delineations  that  all  Paris  recognized  in 
spite  of  the  faint  denials  of  the  author. 

Thus  far  we  have  spoken  of  men  who  were  pre-emi- 
nently dramatists.  A  word  must  be  said  of  those  who 
have  achieved  greater  distinction  in  other  fields,  and, 
finally,  of  the  effort  to  apply  to  the  stage  the  pseudo- 
Naturalistic  theory  of  the  "  human  document,"  or,  as 
those  would-be  dramatists  said,  to  present  "slices  of 
life."  Among  the  novelists  George  Sand,  Ohnet,  and 
Daudet  essayed  the  legitimate  drama,  as  did  also  the 
poets  Banville,  Coppde,  and  the  critic  Lemaitre,  of 
whose  work  it  is  more  convenient  to  speak  elsewhere,1 
There  is  one  novelist,  however,  Octave  Feuillet,  whose 
best  dramatic  work  synchronizing  with  that  of  Augier 
has  a  peculiar  individuality.  Feuillet  began  life  as  a 
collaborator  of  the  elder  Dumas,  but  he  presently  de- 
serted the  Komantic  banner,  and  set  up  his  own  estab- 
lishment as  the  "Family  Musset,"  the  purveyor  of 
novels  and  plays  that  should  make  the  concession  to 
prejudice  rather  than  morals  of  avoiding  those  extra- 
marital relations  so  common  in  the  work  of  Dumas 
fils,  Augier,  and  Sardou.  Beneath  this  varnish  of  moral- 
ity, however,  we  have  a  maximum  of  ethical  perversion  ; 
for,  as  Shakspere  knew,  "  Lilies  that  fester  smell  far 
worse  than  weeds."  Indeed  his  plays  are  so  funda- 
mentally unhealthy,  such  hot-house  growths,  that  one 
feels  that  Feuillet  survived  himself  when  he  survived 
the  Empire  and  the  patronage  of  Euge'nie.2 

1  See  chapters  xi.,  xii.,  xiii.,  and  ix. 

2  I  name  only  Cheveu  blanc,  1856;  Le  Roman  d'un  jeune  homme 
pauvre  (dramatized  1858)  ;  La  Tentatioii,  La  Belle  au  bois  dormant, 
Montjoie,  all  before  1863.     For  a  more  favorable  view  of  Feuillet's 
ethics,  see  Loti's  Discours  at  his  reception  into  the  French  Academy, 
and  Doumic,  op.  cit. 


THE   EVOLUTION   OF   THE   DRAMA.  393 

In  all  the  work  that  has  been  noticed  thus  far  the 
conventions  of  the  stage  as  Scribe  and  the  Romanti- 
cists had  left  it  had  been  observed ;  but  with  the  rise  of 
dogmatic  Naturalism  a  determined  effort  was  made  to 
conquer  the  drama  for  the  theories  that  had  been  so 
rapidly  propagated  in  the  field  of  fiction.  "  The  theatre 
will  be  Naturalistic  or  it  will  cease  to  be,"  said  the  ever 
positive  Zola,  to  whom  the  conservatism  of  the  stage 
had  long  been  a  thorn  in  the  flesh.  Like  the  Roman- 
ticists of  1830,  he  and  his  fellows  felt  that  the  battle 
must  be  won  on  this  field.  The  result  of  the  struggle 
is  instructive,  for  experience  has  corroborated  theory 
in  fixing  the  demarcation  of  the  drama  and  fiction. 

Zola's  "  Naturalisme  au  the'atre  "  was  to  be  the  new 
school's  "  Preface  to  Cromwell,"  and  his  "  Rene'e  "  was 
to  be  the  naturalistic  "  Hernani." 1  The  former  did 
not  convince,  and  the  latter  was  emphatically  rejected 
both  by  the  critics  and  the  public.  In  the  next  year 
he  returned  to  the  charge  in  "  Germinal,"  only  to  find 
those  as  dissatisfied  and  these  more  impatient.  His 
piece  was  pronounced,  with  an  allusion  to  his  own 
vocabulary,  to  be  both  crevante  and  assommante.  And 
yet  the  same  critics  and  the  same  public  would  have 
agreed  that  the  novels  from  which  these  plays  were 
taken 2  were  all  good  and  one  of  them  a  masterpiece ; 
and  that  the  fundamental  situation  of  the  former  was 
essentially  dramatic  is  attested  by  the  success  of 
Racine's  "  Phedre."  Where,  then,  lies  the  secret  of 
their  failure,  if  not  in  this,  that  Naturalism  is  opposed 

1  "Renee"   dates  from    1887.     Zola  had    already  produced    the 
strong  but  gloomy  dramatized  novel  "Taerese   Raquin,"  1873,  and 
Busnach  had  successfully  dramatized  "  I/Assonamoir  "  in  1879. 

2  The  novelistic  sources  are,  for  "  Renee,"  "  Nantas "  and  "  La 
Curee ; "  for  "  Germinal,"  the  novel  of  like  name. 


394  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

to  dramatic  development,  which  then  will  appear  to  be 
different  in  its  requirements  from  prose  fiction?  By 
sacrificing  in  their  mistaken  zeal  for  realistic  effect 
the  conventions  essential  to  the  dramatic  genre,  they 
stretched  a  snare  in  their  own  path.  But  they  failed 
to  notice  an  even  more  fundamental  distinction.  The 
modern  pseudo-scientific  novel  is  essentially  neces- 
sitarian, it  regards  men  as  the  products  of  birth  and 
environment,  while  it  is  a  fundamental  condition  of 
the  drama  to  show  will  in  action.1  Hence  the  skilful 
playwright  who  dramatizes  "  Nana  "  or  "  L'Assommoir  " 
subjects  them  to  fundamental  changes,  without  which 
no  Naturalistic  novel  has  ever  succeeded  on  the  stage.2 
It  is  natural,  however,  that  the  artificiality  of  Scribe, 
of  which  the  dramatists  that  have  occupied  us  in  this 
chapter  retained  perhaps  too  much,  should  have  pro- 
voked a  reaction  toward  greater  realism  in  dramatic 
construction.  A  moderate  representative  of  these  re- 
forming tendencies  is  Becque,  a  realist  with  remarkable 
keenness  of  observation  and  irony.3  More  radical  than 
he  is  Hennique,  once  the  peculiar  star  of  the  Theatre 
Libre,  which  proposed  to  give  the  freest  scope  to 
dramatic  experiment  and  reform.  The  tendency  of  his 
work  is  to  break  up  the  connected  drama  into  a  series 
of  isolated  scenes,4  and  so  to  increase  the  illusion  of 
the  spectator,  who  in  real  life  is  obliged  to  imagine  the 
connection  between  the  disjointed  parts  of  any  pro- 
longed action. 

1  See  Brunetiere,  Litterature  contemporaine,  p.  241  sqq. 

2  The  most  noteworthy  failures  have  been  the  dramatizations  of 
the  Goncourts'  "  Renee  Mauperin,"  "  Germinie  Lacertaux,"  and  "  La 
Fille  Eliza,"  all  backed  by  a  most  enthusiastic  cabal. 

8  Born  1 837.    Characteristic  dramas  are  "  Le  Corbeau  "  and  "  La  Pa- 
risienne."     Autobiography:  Souvenirs  d'un  auteur  dramatique,  1895. 
4  E.  g.,  in  La  Mort  du  due  d'Eughien,  1888. 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  THE  DRAMA.        395 

The  most  noticeable  tendencies  in  the  drama  of  re- 
cent years  are  the  revival  of  romanticisms  in  Kostand 
and  Maeterlinck  and  the  prominence  given  to  social 
questions  as  evidenced  in  the  dramas  of  Octave  Mirbeau, 
Emile  Fabre,  Paul  Hervieu,  Henri  Bernstein,  Paul 
Margueritte,  and  Paul  Bourget.1  Kostaud2  won  con- 
spicuous success  in  both  hemispheres  by  "Cyrano  de 
Bergerac"  (1897),  a  marvel  of  spontaneity,  wit,  verve, 
finished  versification,  and  polished  diction.  He  ap- 
proached but  did  not  equal  this  masterpiece  in  "  L'Aiglon  " 
(1900)  and  in  what  is  known  of  the  as  yet  unfinished 
"  Chanticler." 

Also  in  a  class  by  himself  is  Maurice  Maeterlinck, 
who  beside  a  novel  "  Le  Temple  enseveli,"  several 
volumes  of  poems  and  philosophical  essays,  and  a  re- 
markable prose  poem  of  natural  history,  "  La  Vie  des 
abeilles,"  has  published  since  1889  fourteen  dramas 
unique  in  their  poetic  fancy,  ranging  from  the  intense 
tragedy  of  "  Monna  Vanna  "  to  the  playful  optimism  of 
"The  Blue  Bird."3  They  are  all  dramas  of  thought 
rather  than  of  action,  at  first  full  of  haunting  melan- 
choly, lurking  fatality,  and  weird  mystery,  but  growing 
later  more  serene,  though  still  mystic  in  conception 
and  elusive  in  their  philosophic  signification. 

1  E.  g.,  Mirbean,  Les  Affaires  sont  les  affaires ;  Fabre,  Les  Ventres 
(Tor  and  La  Maison  d'argile;   Hervieu,  Le   Dedale  and  Le  Reveil; 
Bernstein,   Samson,  Le   Voleur,  and  Israel;   Margueritte,  L'Autre; 
Bourget,  Un  Divorce. 

2  Born   1869.    Earlier  plays  are :    Les   Romanesques,   1894,  and 
Princesse  Lointaine,  1895. 

3  Characteristic  dramas  are  Les  Aveugles,  1890 ;  Pelle"as  et  Melis- 
ande,  1892  ;  Ardiane  et  Barbe-bleue,  1901  ;  Monna  Vanna,  1902. 


396  MOPERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

MODERN   FICTION.  —  I.    THE   EVOLUTION   OF  NATURALISM. 

THE  Eomantic  School  won  its  first  triumphs  in  lyric 
poetry,  and  enjoyed  here  its  most  lasting  pre-eminence. 
From  1830  to  1843  it  ruled  the  stage.  But  even  dur- 
ing this  period  of  its  most  unquestioned  sway  it  could 
not  obtain  an  unchallenged  place  in  prose  fiction.  In 
this  department  it  first  became  felt  that  in  enfranchis- 
ing literature  the  Romanticists  had  loosed  too  much 
the  tie  that  bound  it  to  reality.  What  had  been  won 
for  individualism  by  De  Vigny,  Dumas,  and  Hugo  was 
an  inalienable  possession ;  but  several  more  or  less  in- 
dependent novelists  existed  beside  these,  who  were 
unconsciously  paving  the  way  for  the  naturalistic  and 
psychological  schools  of  the  last  generation.  The 
analytic  novelists  of  whom  Bourget  is  a  familiar  type 
may  find  their  origins  in  Constant's  "  Adolphe,"  and 
even  more  directly  in  the  work  of  Stendhal  and  in  the 
lyric  egoism  of  George  Sand's  early  romances ; 1  while 
Balzac  and  Me'rime'e,  though  neither  of  them  without 
a  flavor  of  Romanticism,  first  accentuate  a  movement 
that  culminates  with  Maupassant  and  Zola. 

What  separates  these  writers  from  the  Romantic 
movement  is  in  no  sense  a  reactionary  protest,  a  re- 
turn to  the  methods  of  the  eighteenth  century.  For 
just  as  Romanticism  was  the  concomitant  if  not  the 

1  See  Brunetiere,  Evolution  de  la  poe'sie  lyrique,  p.  293  sqq. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF   NATURALISM.      397 

result  in  literature  of  the  aspiration  and  effort  for  civil 
liberty  that  led  to  the  Eevolution  of  1830,  so  this 
movement  toward  realism  has  followed  the  develop- 
ment of  the  scientific  spirit  in  popular  instruction,  and 
for  that  reason  it  sought  its  first  expression  in  the 
novel,  the  most  popular  of  literary  genres,  though  it 
has  spread  thence  like  leaven  through  all  forms  of 
thought,  and  has  exercised  an  influence  as  deep  and 
more  lasting  than  Eomanticism  itself. 

Among  these  novelists  the  one  who  shows  greatest 
affiliation  with  the  Eomantic  spirit  is  George  Sand, 
and  with  her,  therefore,  it  is  best  to  begin  any  effort 
to  trace  the  evolution  of  French  Naturalistic  fiction, 
though  she  is  the  youngest  of  the  forerunners  of  that 
school  and  survived  its  prime.  It  would  perhaps  be 
hard  to  find,  at  least  in  the  higher  reaches  of  author- 
ship, one  in  whose  veins  flowed  more  varied  blood 
than  was  blended  in  Amantine-Aurore  Dupin,1  who  as 
the  divorced  wife  of  M.  Dudevant  is  the  George 

1  Born  1804;  died  1876.  Of  the  107  volumes  of  her  works  84  con- 
tain prose  fiction,  10  correspondence,  8  memoirs,  and  5  drama.  The 
chronology  of  her  most  typical  novels  is:  First  period  —  Indiana, 
1832;  Valentine,  1832;  Lelia,  1833;  Jacques,  1834;  Andre,  1835; 
Leone  Leoni,  1835  ;  Mauprat,  1836.  Second  period  —  Spiridion,  1838  ; 
Compagnon  du  tour  de  France,  1840;  Horace,  1842;  Consuelo,  1842; 
Comtesse  de  Rudolstadt,  1843  ;  Meunier  d'Angibault,  1845;  Peche  de 
M.  Antoine,  1847.  Third  period  (anticipated  by  Jeanne,  1844,  and 
Mare  au  diable,  1846)  —  Teverino,  1848;  Piccinino,  1848;  La  Petite 
Fadette,  1848,  Francois  le  champi,  1850;  Filleule,  1851;  Mont  Re- 
veche,  1851  ;  Les  Maitres  sonneurs,  1852;  Beaux  messieurs  .du  bois 
dore',  1858;  Mile,  de  la  Quintinie,  1863;  Confession  d'une  jeune  fille, 
1865;  Mile,  de  Merquem,  1870. 

Criticism:  Caro,  George  Sand  (Grands  ecrivains  francais)  ;Faguet, 
xix.  siecle,  p.  383 ;  Brunetiere,  Poe'sie  lyrique,  i.  295  sqq. ;  France,  Vie 
litteraire,  i.  339;  Lemaitre,  Contemporains,  iv.  159;  Pellissier,  Mouve- 
ment  litteraire,  p.  237 ;  Lanson,  Litterature  fra^aise,  p.  973 ;  Taine, 
Nouvelles  essais,  p.  127;  Devaux,  George  Sand. 


398  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Sand  of  literary  history.  For  while  on  her  mother's 
side  her  ancestry  is  soon  lost  in  plebeian  depths,  her 
father  was  a  direct  descendant  of  Augustus  II.  of 
Poland  through  the  Count  de  Saxe,  who  left  behind 
him  a  youth  as  redolent  of  gallant  adventure  as  was 
the  literary  apprenticeship  of  his  granddaughter.  To 
her  mother  she  doubtless  owed  her  taste  for  the  stage, 
and  infant  impressions  of  her  maternal  grandfather's 
bird-shop  have  lent  their  naivet^  to  some  charming 
scenes  in  "Teverino;"  but  the  prevailing  impressions 
of  her  childhood  were  formed  at  Nohant,  the  estate  of 
her  father's  mother,  on  the  lovely  river  Indre  in  Berry, 
one  of  the  most  Arcadian  regions  in  central  France, 
whither  she  went  at  seven  to  draw  from  it  the  purest 
inspirations  of  her  literary  life. 

For  here,  while  the  democratic  sympathies  of  her 
mother  were  maintained  by  frequent  visits,  they  were 
softened  by  a  daily  contact  with  the  old  aristocracy, 
so  that  she  realized  more  than  any  of  the  contemporary 
novelists  what  had  been  the  true  life  of  the  ancien 
regime,  as  she  showed,  for  instance,  in  "  Le  Marquis  de 
Villemer."  But  her  most  fruitful  lessons  were  not 
those  of  the  chateau,  but  rather  the  unconscious  educa- 
tion of  Nature  as  she  walked  by  the  Indre  or  chased 
butterflies  in  the  Dark  Valley,  with  "  Atala,"  "Paul 
and  Virginia,"  or  "  Corinne  "  for  a  companion,  or  per- 
haps the  tales  of  Eousseau,  with  the  education  of  whose 
"  Emile  "  her  own  forms  an  instructive  parallel. 

But  when  she  was  thirteen  the  wave  of  religious 
and  conservative  reaction  that  was  passing  over  France 
persuaded  Madame  Dupin  that  it  was  time  to  con- 
form the  education  of  her  charge  to  the  prejudices  of 
prospective  husbands  ;  and  so  the  young  girl,  profi- 
cient in  shooting,  fencing,  dancing,  but  such  a  child  of 


MODERN   FICTION. — EVOLUTION   OF  NATURALISM.      399 

nature  that  she  had  not  even  learned  to  make  the  sign 
of  the  cross,  was  sent  to  the  "  Dames  Anglaises,"  a 
fashionable  conventual  school  in  Paris,  where  her 
country  manners  immediately  won  her  the  nickname 
of  "little  boy."  The  rich  food  that  her  ardent  im- 
agination found  in  the  splendors  of  Roman  ritual  and 
in  the  peaceful  solemnity  of  the  cloister  has  its  wit- 
ness in  "  Spiridion."  She  became  for  a  time  most  ar- 
dent in  her  devotions,  exceeding  not  only  the  rules 
of  the  school,  but  even  the  dictates  of  prudence,  so 
that  her  superiors  were  constrained  to  check  her 
fervor.  But  in  1820  she  was  recalled  from  this  hot- 
bed of  artificial  emotions  to  her  dying  grandmother, 
and  two  years  later  the  solitary  and  unprotected  girl 
was  overpersuaded  by  her  relatives  to  marry  Franqois 
Dudevant,  a  country  squire  no  better  and  no  worse 
than  most  of  his  prosaic  fellows,  caring  more  to  ex- 
tend his  fields  than  his  mind,  more  for  good  breeds 
of  cattle  than  for  good  breeding.  Now,  of  all  men 
this  philistine  realist  was  the  least  suited  to  be  the 
helpmate  of  an  enthusiastic,  emotional,  and  rather  in- 
dependent girl.  That  he  might  employ  her  dowry  of 
half  a  million  francs  to  their  common  advantage,  he 
thought  it  no  robbery  to  neglect  her  heart.  Many 
have  borne  a  similar  fate  with  philosophy  and  the 
consolations  of  their  children,  but  her  health  broke 
down  at  length  under  the  strain,  and  she  returned  to 
Nohant  from  a  journey  to  the  Pyrenees  with  the 
experience  of  having  roused  and  resisted  for  the  first 
time  an  ardent  passion. 

This  new  vision  of  love  filled  her  imagination.  In 
vain  she  sought  repose  in  art,  in  science,  in  literature. 
Desperate  at  last  in  1828  she  suddenly  abandoned 
her  husband  and  Nohant,  and,  after  a  brief  interval 


400 


MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 


of  rest  with  the  Dames  Anglaises,  supported  herself 
for  a  time  by  coloring  prints,  leading  the  precarious 
Bohemian  life  of  the  students  of  the  Latin  Quarter. 
Here  the  Eevolution  of  July  found  her  modest  attic 
shared  by  Jules  Sandeau,1  with  whom  she  wrote,  under 
the  pseudonym  Jules  Sand,  the  novel "  Eose  et  Blanche," 
a  work  of  such  promise  that  she  readily  found  a  pub- 
lisher for  "  Indiana ; "  and  as  this  was  hers  alone,  she 
signed  it  George  Sand. 

Thus  launched  on  a  literary  career,  she  wrote  more 
than  thirty  volumes  in  ten  years,  all  in  the  main 
under  the  direct  inspiration  of  Rousseau,  Chateau- 
briand, and  her  own  experience  of  married  life;  for 
these  novels  of  her  first  manner  are  busied  almost 
wholly  with  the  "  unholy  trinity  "  of  husband,  lover, 
and  femme  incomprise.  But  there  is  development  in 
them.  At  first  the  men  are  all  unsympathetic.  Then 
in  "  Valentine  "  the  husband  becomes  at  least  polished, 
the  lover  noble,  generous,  attractive,  while  the  woman 
remains  still  Madame  Dudevant.  Here,  too,  we  find 
the  first  traces  of  that  power  of  picturesque  descrip- 
tion of  nature  that  did  not  reach  its  full  development 
till  toward  the  close  of  her  second  period.  Then,  in 
her  third  novel,  "  Jacques,"  she  is  ready  to  preach  the 
gospel  of  free  love,  convinced  that  the  restraints  of 
marriage  are  unfavorable  to  the  conservation  of  pas- 
sion, and  admiring  the  magnanimity  of  a  husband 
who  will  make  way  for  a  lover  by  suicide.  Wild  as 
this  tale  is,  it  was  the  herald  of  a  long  train  of  similar 
novels  both  in  France  and  Germany,  and  is  as  impor- 
tant for  the  evolution  of  fiction  as  "  Antony  "  for  that 
of  the  drama. 

The  climax  of  this  period  however  is  marked  by  the 

1  See  p.  359,  note. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF   NATURALISM.      401 

gloomy,  restless  despair  of  "  Leila,"  whose  wild  un- 
reasoning eloquence  shows  that  for  the  time  its  author 
had  lost  faith  not  only  in  marriage  but  in  love  itself 
and  even  in  life.  Yet  the  book  seems  to  have  freed 
her  bosom  of  the  perilous  stuff  that  preyed  upon 
her  heart,  and  from  this  time  she  grew  more  recon- 
ciled to  the  world.  "  Leone  Leoni "  may  place  pas- 
sion above  reason,  but  it  marks  her  first  serious 
attempt  at  psychological  analysis ;  and  when,  in  1836, 
a  legal  separation  from  her  husband  restored  to  some 
extent  her  fortune,  travel  and  new  experiences  were 
reflected  in  stories  with  a  wider  range  of  interest. 
"  Mauprat "  shows  growing  power  in  the  delineation 
of  character,  while  "Andre'"  touches  the  pastoral 
vein  from  which  she  afterward  drew  the  richest  treas- 
ures of  her  genius. 

Her  free  Bohemian  life  had  brought  her  in  contact 
with  many  men  of  genius.  Sandeau  yielded  his  place 
to  Alfred  de  Musset,  with  whom  she  made  a  journey 
to  Italy,  of  which  each  has  left  a  tale  of  woe.1  Then 
the  socialistic  lawyer- Michel  (de  Bourges)  claimed  her 
enthusiasm,  to  be  followed  by  the  composer  Chopin, 
whose  mark  may  be  found  on  "Consuelo."  But  in 
1839  she  grew  weary  of  this  nomad  life  and  a  little 
doubtful  of  her  philosophy  of  individualistic  egoism. 
She  returned  to  Nohant,  and  presently  developed  into 
a  somewhat  prosaic  chatelaine.  Meantime,  however, 
her  mobile  mind  had  been  drawn  into  Christian  So- 
cialistic channels  by  the  enthusiastic  Lamennais,  as 
well  as  by  miscellaneous  and  •  ill-digested  reading  of 
the  philosophers  of  the  eighteenth  century.  In  1837 
the  resigned  optimism  of  the  "  Letters  to  Marcia " 

1  He  in  "  Un  Merle  blanc,"  she  in  '•  Elle  et  lui,"  to  which  the  poet's 
brother  Paul  replied  in  "  Lui  et  elle." 

26 


402  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

seemed  to  mark  a  radical  change  from  the  position  of 
"  Lelia  "  four  years  before.  But  in  the  very  next  year 
"  Spiridion "  showed  that  she  had  not  yet  come  to 
clearness,  for  here  she  recants  her  recantation,  and 
seeks  the  solution  of  the  evils  of  society,  not  in  re- 
ligion but  in  politics.  Now,  this  involved  the  aban- 
donment of  the  Eomantic  position,  and  so  inaugurates 
a  second  period,  extending  to  the  Eevolution  of  1848, 
during  which  her  books  are  tinged  with  a  generous 
but  ill-defined  and  illogical  socialism.  This  found 
its  extreme  expression  in  the  "Meunier  d'Angibault," 
where  there  is  a  complete  fusion  of  class  distinctions ; 
but  the  most  popular  novel  of  the  group  is  "  Consuelo," 
the  fruit  of  her  long  attachment  to  Chopin,  though 
here  the  political  and  social  speculations  are  intruded 
rather  than  essential. 

One  may  pass  briefly  over  these  years  in  which 
George  Sand  was  little  more  than  the  echo,  sometimes 
the  distorted  echo,  of  such  nebulous  thinkers  as  Jean 
Eeynaud,  Barbes,  and  Pierre  Leroux.  Her  socialism  led 
her,  however,  to  take  many  of  her  characters  from  the 
artisan  and  peasant  classes,  that,  till  then,  had  been 
hardly  more  than  parodied  in  fiction;  but  she  com- 
bined poetic  fancy  with  minute  observation,  and  so 
produced  "  Jeanne  "  and  "  La  Mare  au  diable,"  natu- 
ralistic idyls  that  mark  an  important  step  in  the 
divorce  of  fiction  from  the  lyric  spirit  of  Eomanticism, 
while  at  the  same  time  they  widened  the  sphere  of 
the  novel  for  the  ultra  Eomanticists  of  socialism,  Sue 
and  Hugo.  But  this  phase  of  her  productivity  was 
interrupted  by  the  Eevolution,  which  recalled  her  for 
a  time  to  politics  and  to  journalism  under  the  auspices 
of  Ledru-Eollin.  Yet  the  experiences  of  May  and 
June  cooled  the  enthusiasms  of  February.  They  re- 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF   NATURALISM.      403 

stored  her  to  literature,  where  she  was  now  to  develop 
her  third,  the  pastoral,  manner. 

Her  studies  of  the  peasantry  of  Berry  are  probably 
George  Sand's  most  permanent  contribution  to  litera- 
ture. They  show  a  feeling  for  nature,  exquisite  and  till 
then  unparalleled  in  French  fiction.  Delicate  in  style, 
admirable  in  composition,  deeply  poetic,  yet  simply 
realistic,  "  La  Mare  au  diable,"  "  Francois  le  champi," 
"  La  Petite  Fadette,"  and  most  original  of  all,  "  Les 
Maitres  sonneurs,"  have  the  perpetual  charm  that 
belongs  to  every  union  of  truth  and  beauty.  Still,  this 
vein,  however  rich,  could  not  be  worked  indefinitely. 
The  pastoral  gradually  gave  place  to  dramatic  at- 
tempts, one  of  which,  "  Le  Marquis  de  Villemer,"  in 
which  she  had  the  collaboration  of  Dumas  fils,  had 
much  success.  Meantime,  however,  from  the  pastoral 
and  the  drama  she  was  developing  her  fourth  manner, 
where,  with  mind  and  taste  clarified  by  age,  she  re- 
tains the  idyllic  tone  and  the  country  scene,  but  adds 
to  the  delicate  delineation  of  character  a  fuller  in- 
trigue, richer  life,  and  greater  variety  of  situation.1 
Her  pen  was  tireless,  and  till  she  was  past  seventy  she 
continued  to  do  her  daily  task.  The  principal  interest 
of  the  last  decade,  however,  centres  in  her  "  Journal " 
during  the  German  war,  and  in  her  letters,  especially 
those  to  Flaubert,  for  these  throw  most  interesting 
light  on  her  critical  ideas  and  literary  methods. 

Her  view  of  the  novelist's  art  made  it  essentially  the 
expression  of  lyric  passion.  "  Nothing  is  strong  in 

1  Typical  of  the  period  are  "  Mile.  Merquem,"  "  Mile,  de  la  Quin- 
tinie,"  "  Le  Marquis  de  Villemer,"  and  "  Jean  de  la  Roche,"  the  scenes 
of  which  are  laid  respectively  in  Normandy,  Savoy,  the  Velay,  and 
Auvergne.  Characteristic  also  are  "  Legendes  rustiques "  and 
"  Marianne." 


404  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

me,"  she  said,  "  but  the  necessity  of  love ; "  and  when 
this  is  in  question,  she  will  be  thoroughly  Eomantic, 
however  realistic  she  may  be  elsewhere.  Her  passion 
varies,  however.  It  is  at  first  personal,  then  social  and 
humanitarian.  Her  central  impulse  is  always  an  emo- 
tion, not  an  idea,  and  this  is  reflected  in  the  composi- 
tion of  her  novels,  where  she  is  apt  to  conceive  her 
situation  and  "  let  her  pen  trot "  with  no  clearly  de- 
fined goal.  So  the  beginning  of  each  story  is  apt  to 
be  the  best,  and  the  body  of  the  work  better  than  its 
close,  which  occurs,  not  from  any  structural  necessity, 
but  only  because  the  subject  has  written  itself  out  in 
her  mind,  from  which,  indeed,  she  was  wont  to  let  it 
pass  so  completely  that  if  she  chanced  to  read  her  own 
novels  after  an  interval,  she  found  she  could  not  recall 
so  much  as  the  names  of  the  characters. 

This  composition  at  hap-hazard,  finishing  one  novel 
and  beginning  another  on  the  same  evening,  was  sus- 
tained by  a  fertile  imagination  that  loved  to  cradle 
itself  in  a  rosy  optimism.  She  delighted  in  "  superior 
beings,"  in  whose  magnanimity,  gentleness,  and  pas- 
sionate devotion  the  glowing  sympathies  of  her  heart 
alone  found  satisfaction.  Hence  her  heroes  and  hero- 
ines become  less  real,  and  so  attract  us  less  than  the 
more  genuine  creatures  of  earth  that  surround  them. 
And  here,  curiously  enough,  her  strength  is  just  where 
Balzac,  her  greatest  contemporary,  is  weakest,  —  in  the 
aristocracy  and  in  her  young  girls.  "You  write  the 
'  Come'die  humaine,'  "  she  says  to  him ;  "  I  should  like 
to  write  the  e'pope'e,  the  eclogue  of  humanity."  For 
such  real  flesh  and  blood  girls  as  hers,  we  must  go 
back  to  Marivaux  if  not  to  Moliere.  "  Not  the  child 
nor  the  young  wife,  but  the  budding  woman,  naive, 
gentle,  timid,  with  her  ingenuous  coquetries,  her  comic 


MODERN  FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF   NATURALISM.      405 

little  vexations,  her  timorous  ventures,  her  invincibly 
romantic  disposition,  and  her  constant  bashfulness  at 
showing  it,  her  long,  silent  hopes,  and  discreet  waiting, 
the  tempestuous  heart  and  the  calm  face ;  all  that 
little  world  so  thrilling,  so  concentrated,  so  manifold. 
All  fail  here,  and  George  Sand,  too,  sometimes,  but  not 
always."  l 

She  thought  herself  "extremely  feminine  in  the 
inconsequence  of  her  ideas  and  absolute  lack  of  logic." 
But  she  was  sensible,  though  not  profound.  The 
Eomantic  girls  who  took  her  heroines  literally  got  no 
comfort  from  her.  "  Lelia  is  not  I,"  she  writes  to  one 
of  them  ;  "  I  am  a  better  woman  than  that.  It  is  only 
a  poem,  not  a  doctrine."  She  could  not  have  spoken 
more  truly.  She  is  pre-eminently  the  poet  among  the 
novelists  of  the  century.  Standing  between  the  Ro- 
mantic novel  of  adventure  and  the  realistic  study  of 
manners,  between  Dumas  and  Balzac,  she  renews  the 
idyl,  wins  back  the  lyric  from  its  extreme  individualism, 
unites  poetry  to  reality,  and,  if  she  left  few  descend- 
ants in  France  to  walk  in  her  via  media,  the  seeds  she 
scattered  found  fruitful  soil  in  England,  and  especially 
in  Russia,  whence  they  were  brought  back  in  the  last 
generation  to  win  a  wide  acceptance  that  was  an  augury 
of  the  approaching  revival  of  her  own  popularity. 

More  connected  with  the  beginnings  of  Romanticism 
than  George  Sand,  yet  more  sharply  differentiated 
from  it,  both  in  his  literary  methods  and  in  his  aims, 
is  Henri  Beyle,  or  Stendhal,  as  he  preferred  to  call 
himself.  He  can  hardly  be  ranked  among  great  novel- 
ists, unless  the  keenest  analysis  of  character  alone 
give  that  rank ;  he  was  never  popular,  and  probably 
never  will  be.  Yet  his  influence  is  not  to  be  measured 

1  Faguet,  xix.  siecle,  p.  403. 


406  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

by  the  number  of  his  readers,  for,  like  the  Goncourt 
Brothers,  he  has  been  read,  admired,  and  studied  by  those 
more  popular  writers  who  gave  to  the  fiction  of  the 
second  Empire  its  character,  while  through  them  and 
by  his  own  work,  his  influence  has  been  continued  to 
our  own  day. 

Beyle's l  childhood  was  irritated  by  misdirected 
piety  or  its  pretence,  and  so  he  became  in  youth  a 
disciple  of  the  Materialists;  but  at  seventeen  the 
Napoleonic  campaigns  drew  him  into  the  active  army, 
where  he  learned  a  passionate .  love  of  Bonaparte  that 
he  was  to  display  boldly  in  after  days  when  such  sen- 
timents were  neither  popular  nor  prudent.  He  served 
the  Emperor  in  Italy  and  Germany,  and  followed  him 
to  Russia ;  but  ill  health  had  constrained  him  to  leave 
the  army  before  Napoleon's  first  abdication,  and  he 
watched  with  philosophic  calm  the  strange  course  of 
the  Hundred  Days.  Milan  had  long  been  his  favorite 
city,  and  here  he  lived  till  he  was  expelled  by  the  Aus- 
trian police  in  1821.  He  remained  in  Italy,  however, 
except  for  a  few  brief  visits  to  Paris,  until  his  death. 

This  expatriation  only  symbolized  the  moral  and  lit- 
erary isolation  of  his  mind.  His  boyhood  had  given 
him  more  sympathy  with  the  age  of  Voltaire  than 
with  that  of  Chateaubriand,  while  his  inveterate  habit 

1  Born  1783;  died  1842.  Collected  works  in  nineteen  volumes,  with 
five  more  of  posthumous  letters  and  journals.  Principal  novels: 
Armance,  1827  ;  Le  Rouge  et  le  noir,  1831 ;  La  Chartreuse  de  Panne, 
1839. 

Criticism:  Taine,  Essais  de  critique  et  d'histoire;  Bourget,  Psy- 
chologic contemporaine ;  Zola,  Romanciers  naturalistes ;  Lemaitre, 
Contemporains,  iv.  3;  Rod,  Stendhal  (Grands  ecrivains  francais); 
Cordier,  Stendhal  raconte  par  ses  amis ;  Merimee,  Portraits  historiques ; 
Sainte-Beuve,  Causeries  du  lundi,  ix.  301-341 ;  Chuquet,  Stendhal- 
Beyle  ;  Huneker,  Egoists,  pp.  1-65. 


MODERN  FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF  NATURALISM.      407 

of  anxious  introspection  marks  a  greater  affinity  with 
the  modern  Psychologists  and  Symbolists  than  with 
his  Komantic  contemporaries.  So  he  is  claimed  as  an 
ancestor  by  men  so  far  apart  in  the  world  of  letters  as 
Taine,  Zola,  and  Bourget,  for  he  shares  with  them  all 
the  spirit  of  relentless  analysis.  This  is  a  veritable 
instinct  with  him.  The  most  ^minute  self -examina- 
tions fill  his  Journal./  He  confesses  his  aims  with  a 
frankness  that  is  often  startling,  and  notes,  cynically 
sometimes,  what  he  should  have  done  or  left  undone 
to  attain  them.  He  was,  as  he  is  constantly  telling 
himself,  "different"  from  his  environment,  born  either 
too  early  or  too  late.  His  contemporaries  did  not  un- 
derstand him.  Hardly  one  of  his  books  could  have 
paid  the  expenses  of  publication,  and  it  is  said  that 
his  curious  essay  on  "  Love/'  the  fruit  of  persistent 
experiment  and  analysis,  attained  the  phenomenal  sale 
of  seventeen  copies  in  eleven  years.  But  now  cheap 
and  popular  as  well  as  luxurious  and  costly  editions 
are  published  of  works  that  never  paid  the  type-setter, 
and  he  whom  Nisard,  the  chief  literary  historian  of 
the  early  part  of  the  century,  did  not  so  much  as  name, 
has  the  sweepings  of  his  study  edited  without  sifting, 
attracts  the  critical  study  of  the  best  minds  of  France, 
and  finds  his  natural  place  among  "  Les  Grands  e'cri- 
vains  francais." 

His  literary  work  began  with  a  volume  of  Italian 
travel  and  another  on  Painting  in  Italy  (1817).  Five 
years  later  came  the  striking  essay  on  "Love"  and 
"  Eacine  and  Shakspere,"  a  welcome  aid  to  the  ad- 
vance guard  of  Romanticism.  Again  five  years  and 
his  first  novel,  "  Arniance,"  is  offered  to  an  indifferent 
public.  Four  years  later  appeared  "  Le  Rouge  et  le  noir," 
a  study  of  the  results  of  the  Restoration  on  the  youth  of 


408  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

France,  thought  by  the  Naturalists  to  be  his  master- 
piece, probably  because  those  not  of  that  coterie  have 
preferred  "  La  Chartreuse  de  Parme  "  (1839).  He  left 
also  an  unfinished  novel  of  which  the  fragment  gives 
promise  that  it  might  have  been  his  best. 

The  long  intervals  that  separate  these  works  justify 
Zola's  remark  that  to  judge  Stendhal  from  himself  his 
work  was  the  accident  of  his  existence.  He  was 
always  posing  as  a  literary  dilettante,  not  as  an  author. 
He  was  not  a  close  student,  and  he  had  not  a  philo- 
sophic mind,  but  he  used  with  skill  the  information 
that  came  in  his  way,  and  he  had  a  happy  faculty  of 
•  making  the  shallow  seem  deep.  There  was  in  him  a 
little  of  the  dandy,  a  good  deal  of  the  soldier,  and  he 
would  have  been  glad  if  there  had  been  more  of  the  Don 
Juan.  In  religion  he  continued  always  a  thorough- 
going disciple  of  Helve'tius  and  Condillac ;  that  is,  he 
was  an  optimistic  atheist  of  a  genus  now  happily 
extinct.  As  a  critic,  his  blunders  were  cyclopean,  sur- 
passed only  by  his  monumental  self-complacency.  He 
tells  us  in  his  Journal  that  he  is  resolved  to  get  the 
reputation  of  the  greatest  poet  of  France,  "  not  by  in- 
trigue like  Voltaire,  but  by  deserving  it.  Therefore," 
continues  the  youth  of  twenty,  "  I  must  learn  Greek, 
and  not  form  my  taste  on  the  model  of  my  predecessors." 
A  little  later  he  is  pleased  to  record  "  my  proud  bearing," 
"  my  charming  grace,"  and  "  the  reflection  in  la  Moliere 
that  I  made  at  that  moment."  He  admires  "  the  in- 
imitable physiognomy  of  my  conversation."  Surely 
facile  fatuousness  never  went  further;  and  yet  this  man 
had  keener  powers  of  psychic  analysis  than  any  other 
writer  of  his  generation.  But  this  appears  chiefly  in 
his  novels,  to  whose  character  and  influence  we  may 
now  fitly  confine  our  attention. 


MODEKN   FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF  NATURALISM.      409 

Yet  even  in  his  fiction  the  reader  must  be  warned 
to  expect  little  from  a  writer  who  says  that  he  "  reads 
the  Code  every  morning  to  catch  the  tone,"  and  catches 
it  so  faithfully  as  to  make  his  work  from  this  point  of 
view  "  detestable "  in  the  eyes  of  Sainte-Beuve.  His 
sole  interest  is  in  the  analysis  of  the  states  of  soul  of 
himself,  of  his  friends,  of  the  creations  of  his  fancy ;  and 
he  makes  it  because  he  is  convinced  that  if  he  will  but 
study  them  closely  enough  he  can  spy  out  the  secret  of 
happiness.  Hence  his  eagerness  has  little  of  the  objec- 
tivity of  the  modern  school.  He  is  always  present  in 
his  work,  commenting  on  his  characters,  as  Thackeray 
loved  to  do  and  as  Zola  or  Bourget  would  not.  And  he 
is  differentiated  from  the  moderns  in  another  important 
matter.  In  his  analysis  of  thoughts  and  sentiments 
he  neglected,  as  the  psychology  of  his  time  did  also, 
the  influence  of  external  conditions,  and  so  he  leaves 
half  unfulfilled  his  declared  purpose  "  to  make  his 
novels  a  mirror  which  as  you  carry  it  along  the  street 
lets  all  sorts  of  images  be  reflected  in  it  as  chance 
directs."  But  curiously  or  perversely,  it  is  precisely 
this  lack  of  definite  environment  that  he  criticises  in 
French  classical  tragedy,  of  which  he  thinks  it  one  of 
the  chief  faults  "  to  forget  that  there  is  no  sensibility 
(that  is,  no  power  of  arousing  sympathetic  emotion) 
without  details." 

(V  In  all  his  novels  the  one  subject  of  analysis  is  the 
various  forms  of  restlessness  into  which  the  fall  of 
Napoleon  had  thrown  a  generation  brought  up  to 
action  and  quick  decision,  trained  to  seek  and  to  expect 
a  life  filled  with  violent  emotions  and  vaulting  ambi- 
tions, and  cast  now,  their  occupation  gone,  on  the  piping 
times  of  the  Kestoration.f  How  shall  this  pent  up 
energy  and  passion  find  a  vent  f/ is  the  question  that 


410  MODERN    FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

all  his  heroes  are  set  to  answer,  from  "  Armance "  to 
the  posthumous  "Lamiel."  Stendhal  had  a  sort  of 
worship  of  energy  and  passion.  It  is  this  that  makes 
the  Italy  of  the  sixteenth  century  particularly  dear  to 
him.  He  thought  it  high  praise  to  call  Napoleon  a 
descendant  of  the  condottieri.  It  was  for  their  uncon- 
trollable passion  that  Italian  women  found  especial 
favor  in  his  eyes.  He  felt  more  at  home  in  Milan 
than  in  Paris,  and  composed  for  himself  the  Italian 
epitaph:  "Here  lies  Henri  Beyle,  Milanese.  He 
lived,  wrote,  and  loved." 

In  a  very  discriminating  essay  the  pontiff  of  Natu- 
ralism once  called  Stendhal1  "the  father  of  us  all." 
An  examination  of  his  novels  will  show  how  far  and 
how  he  merits  the  title.  When  "  Armance  "  describes 
itself  as  "  some  scenes  from  a  Parisian  salon  in  1827," 
it  promises  a  realistic  study  of  social  types,  but  the 
book  brings  us  immediately  and  exclusively  into  the 
company  of  those  exceptional  beings  that  alone  attract 
Stendhal,  just  as  they  did  Taine,  because  in  them  all 
psychological  processes  appear  magnified.  Through- 
out his  hero  and  heroine  seem  afraid  of  becoming 
the  dupes  each  of  the  other,  just  as  Stendhal  himself 
spent  his  life  in  self-tormenting  dread  of  being  the 
victim  of  his  friends  and  of  the  conventions  of  society. 
The  interest  in  these  people  who  morbidly  shrink  from 
their  mutual  love  lies  solely  in  the  minute  photography 
of  their  changing  thoughts  and  feelings.  The  curiosity 
that  they  awaken  in  the  reader  is,  as  Zola  says,  like 
that  of  a  child  who  holds  a  watch  to  his  ear  to  hear  it 
tick.  But  while  as  a  novel  the  book  is  undeniably 
hard  reading,  the  analysis  of  motive  was  executed  with 
an  acuteness  wholly  new  in  fiction. 

1  Zola,  Roraanciers  naturalistes,  p.  124. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF   NATURALISM.      411 

Of  far  more  significance  in  the  evolution  of  fiction  is 
"  Le  Eouge  et  le  noir,"  whose  protagonist  Julien  Sorel  is  a 
great  and  typical  creation.  His  career,  though  founded 
in  fact,1  is  a  veritable  breviary  of  hypocrisy  that 
throws  no  little  light  on  dark  corners  of  Stendhal's 
own  character.  The  energies  that  would  have  won 
Julien  promotion  and  glory  in  the  army  of  Napoleon 
may  not  "  fust  in  him  unused,"  but  find  in  the  church 
the  only  avenue  of  rapid  promotion  and  social  dis- 
tinction. In  his  wider  purpose  to  make  his  book  a 
"  chronicle  of  the  nineteenth  century,"  a  realistic  study 
of  Parisian  society,  Stendhal  failed  because  he  had 
neither  the  knowledge  nor  the  sympathy  of  Balzac. 
But  in  intent  "  Le  Eouge  et  le  noir  "  is  a  forerunner  of 
the  "  Come'die  humaine  ;"  and  if  he  did  not  give  a  true 
picture  of  society,  he  did  render  with  the  keenest  analy- 
sis a  state  of  mind  common  to  the  French  youth  of  the 
Restoration,  and  in  Julien  he  showed  the  world  what 
he  himself  wished  to  be  thought  to  be  and  in  some 
measure  was,  "the  strangest  mixture  conceivable  of 
originality,  natural  and  acquired,  of  sincerity  and  pose, 
of  clairvoyance  and  illusion,  of  dissimulation  and  reck- 
lessness." The  very  wrecking  of  the  hypocrite's  life 
at  the  close  through  the  unconquerable  impulse  of 
passion  is  only  an  illustration  of  Stendhal's  view  that 
passion  is,  and  ought  to  be,  the  supreme  arbiter  of 
destiny.  Julien's  execution  is  his  apotheosis. 

Though  skilful  in  the  dissection  of  motives,  "Le  Eouge 
et  le  noir  "  is  careless  in  style  and  slovenly  in  construc- 
tion. The  action  is  constantly  suspended  or  delayed, 
while  the  author  belabors  the  brains  of  his  characters, 
till  the  reader  is  in  danger  of  a  sympathetic  headache. 

1  It  is  based  on  facts  brought  out  at  the  trial  of  a  theological  stu- 
dent, Berthelet  of  Besancon. 


MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

'he  modern  psychological  school,  Bourget  and  his  fel- 
lows, may  find  their  method  anticipated  in  the  account 
of  Julien's  seminary  life,  and  of  his  reflections  in  the 
condemned  cell,  which  it  is  curious  to  contrast  with 
Hugo's  nearly  contemporary  "  Dernier  jour  d'un  con- 
damneY'  The  Naturalists  see  their  process  reflected  in 
Julien's  relations  to  Mathilde  and  her  father,  in  which 
there  are  touches  worthy  of  Flaubert.  But  as  a  whole 
the  characters  are  too  "  different,"  as  Stendhal  would 
say,  from  ordinary  mortals  to  suit  the  disciples  of  Zola ; 
and  Bourget  justly  sees  in  "  Le  Eouge  et  le  noir,"  as 
well  as  in  "  La  Chartreuse  de  Parme,"  forerunners  of 
the  new  psychologic  fiction. 

But  "  La  Chartreuse  de  Parme  "  is  indeed  all  things 
to  all  men.  Its  best-known  episode,  the  battle  of 
Waterloo,  strongly  recalls  the  finest  work  of  Zola. 
Bourget  may  discern  his  method  once  more  in  the 
development  of  the  character  of  Fabrice,  who  is  in 
many  respects  a  retouching  of  Julien,  essaying  the 
church  on  the  collapse  of  the  empire,  but  ending  his 
life  of  adventure  in  an  archiepiscopal  see ;  and  both 
these  elements  are  combined  with  a  strong  dose  of 
Romantic  passion  and  so-called  "  local  color."  Here 
the  minute  dissection  of  motive  alternates  with  duels, 
dungeons,  poisons,  and  hair-breadth  'scapes,  that  sug- 
gest without  equalling  Hugo  or  Dumas,  and  import 
into  the  Italy  of  Bonaparte  the  untamed  passions  of 
the  Borgias.  The  characters  are  still  "  different ; "  but 
the  author  threw  himself  into  his  work  with  more 
sympathetic  interest,  and  gave  French  fiction  its  first 
serious  study  of  foreign  life. 

An  unfinished  fragment,  "  Le  Chasseur  vert,"  prom- 
ised more  than  Stendhal  had  yet  realized  in  fiction, 
though  the  general  theme  remains  the  same.  Indeed, 


MODERN  FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF   NATURALISM.      413 

it  seems  as  though  in  his  four  novels  the  author  had 
undertaken  to  project  his  own  condition  into  four  dif- 
ferent environments.  "  What  would  Henri  Beyle  have 
become  if  he  had  been  an  aristocrat  ? "  he  asks  in 
"  Armance."  "  What  if  he  had  been  a  plebeian,  or  an 
Italian  cadet  ? "  he  inquires  of  himself  in  "  Le  Rouge  et 
le  noir  "  and  the  "Chartreuse."  And  in  his  last  novel 
he  thinks  himself  of  the  aristocracy  of  wealth,  the  son 
of  a  banker,  who  for  sheer  ennui  enters  the  army, 
though  he  knows  it  has  little  to  offer  save  garrison 
routine.  A  realistic  study  of  this  life,  with  a  faint 
background  of  clerical  and  political  intrigue,  is  all  that 
remains  of  "  Le  Chasseur  vert." 

It  would  be  difficult  to  resume  better  the  general 
impression  that  Stendhal  leaves  on  the  modern  reader 
than  is  done  at  the  close  of  Zola's  striking  essay. 
Stendhal,  he  says  in  effect,  is  great  when  his  logic 
applies  itself  to  incontestable  facts  of  human  nature, 
but  he  is  only  a  dilettante  of  nature  when  he  puts  his 
superior  and  "  different "  characters  on  the  rack.  He 
introduced  analysis  into  French  fiction,  and  in  it  he 
was  exquisite  and  unique,  but  he  lacked  the  broad 
human  sympathy  of  the  great  romancers.  Life  is 
more  simple  than  he  made  it.  Hence  he  founded  no 
school,  though  his  work  was  admired  and  studied  by 
Balzac  and  Me'rime'e.  The  moment  of  his  greatest  in- 
fluence on  French  letters  was,  as  he  had  prophesied 
with  curious  foresight,  in  1880,  when  the  more  thought- 
ful men  of  letters  were  beginning  to  turn  from  the 
false  and  dogmatic  Naturalism  of  Zola,  with  his  persis- 
tent mockery  of  "  metaphysical  jumping-jacks,"  of  "  the 
continuous  and  exclusive  study  of  the  functions  of  the 
cerebrum,"  and  his  cynical  question,  "  What  became 
of  the  nobility  of  the  brain  when  the  belly  was  sick  ? " 


414  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

Men  who  shrank  from  these  ethics  of  the  dust  saw  in 
Stendhal  the  possibility  of  a  psychological  naturalism, 
and  for  a  time  Bourget  and  his  most  brilliant  followers 
studied  Stendhal,  till  they  came  to  assimilate  and 
reproduce  his  very  phrases  and  characters.1 

Far  the  greatest  figure,  however,  in  the  fiction  of  this 
period  is  Honore"  de  Balzac,2  the  tragic  story  of  whose 
life  is  in  some  measure  involved  in  any  effort  to  measure 
his  genius.  He  was  three  years  older  than  Hugo,  and 
was  trained  as  a  lawyer,  but  no  discouragement  could 
divert  him  from  literature.  I  To  procure  resources  that 
might  enable  him  to  give  himself  wholly  to  letters,  he 
embarked  in  speculations  that  left  him  in  financial 
straits  from  which  his  improvidence  never  permitted 
him  wholly  to  extricate  himself.  Determined  to  win 
his  livelihood  by  his  pen,  he  practised  his  hand  in 
youthful  romances  with  which  he  wisely  refused  to 
burden  his  future  reputation,  and  at  thirty  began  the 
great  series  of  his  "Come'die  humaine,"  though  that 

1  Cp.  Rod,  Stendhal,  p.  151. 

2  Born  1799;  died  1850.     (Euvres,  twenty-four  or  fifty-five  volumes, 
beside  two  of  correspondence  and  additional  letters  first  published  in 
"  Revue  de  Paris,"  from  February,  1894,  to  March,  1895.   Of  the  fifty- 
five  volumes  above,  ten  are  occupied  by  youthful  tales,  three  by  the 
"  Contes  drolatiques,"  and   two  by  dramas.    The  rest  contain    the 
"  Come'die  humaine,"  of  which  there  is  also  an  edition  in  forty-seven 
volumes  with  a  valuable  index  to  characters  appended  to  each  work. 

Bibliography :  Louvenjoul,  Histoire  des  CEuvres  de  H.  de  Balzac. 
Biography  :  Ferry,  Balzac  et  ses  amis  ;  Wormeley,  Memoir  of  Balzac ; 
Brunetiere,  Honore  de  Balzac.  Criticism  :  Taine,  Nouveaux  essais 
de  critique  et  d'histoire ;  Faguet,  xix.  siecle ;  Zola,  Romanciers 
uaturalistes ;  Flat,  Essais  sur  Balzac,  2  vols. ;  Sainte-Beuve,  Portraits 
contemporains,  i.  432,  and  Causeries,  v.  443.  A  convenient  dictionary 
of  characters  is:  Cerfbeer  et  Christophe,  Repertoire  de  la  Comedie 
humaine  (reviewed  in  France,  Vie  litteraire,  i.  145).  Abstracts  of 
plots  may  be  found  in  the  otherwise  valueless  Barriere,  L'CEuvre  de 
Balzac.  Louvenjoul,  op.  cit.  p.  382,  reprints  an  order  for  reading 
the  novels  suggested  by  Alphonse  Boule'. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF  NATUEALISM.      415 

title  was  not  given  to  it  till  1843,  nor  the  plan  of  con- 
necting the  novels  at  all  conceived  till  the  task  was 
well  advanced  (1833). 

Even  this  maturer  work  was  produced  under  pres- 
sure, and  often  betrays  the  fact,  though  the  Correspond- 
ence alone  reveals  the  constant  harassing  under  which 
his  great  genius  labored,  and  shows  how  few  bright 
rays  came  to  lighten  his  life.  He  had  not  even  the 
consolation  of  unchallenged  recognition  of  his  talent, 
for  he  had  never  been  willing  to  crook  the  pregnant 
hinges  of  the  knee  to  a  venal  press,  and  those  who  had 
praised  "Les  Chouans,"  his  first  acknowledged  story, 
received  with  studied  injustice  far  stronger  works  of  an 
author  who  roused  both  their  envy  and  their  fear. 
This  stung  him  to  a  scathing  exhibition  of  the  degra- 
dation of  Parisian  journalism,  and  after  the  appearance 
of  "  Les  Illusions  perdues  "  there  was  almost  a  conspir- 
acy to  hinder  the  wide  circulation  of  his  books  and  the 
general  recognition  of  his  genius.  Yet  Balzac  was 
well  paid  according  to  the  standards  of  the  time.  He 
could  have  discharged  his  debts  and  laughed  at  his 
detractors,  but  he  never  acquired  habits  of  methodical 
economy,  he  travelled  freely  and  even  extravagantly, 
doubled  the  cost  of  his  publishing  by  erratic  methods 
of  composition  and  correction,  and  so,  largely  by  his 
own  fault,  lived  and  died  in  daily  dread  of  the  "  privy 
paw"  of  the  sheriff. 

The  fundamental  materialism  of  his  strongly  devel- 
oped character  was  stamped  on  features  that  are  said 
to  have  resembled  those  of  Nero,  and  found  still  fur- 
ther expression  in  a  huge  frame  that  resisted  for  years 
anxieties  and  labors  that  seem  almost  incredible.  At 
times  he  wrote  eighteen  hours  a  day,  and  usually  twelve 
even  when  travelling.  His  letters  to  the  Countess 


416  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Hanska,  afterward  his  wife,  are  full  of  allusions  to  the 
goading  of  his  fagged  mind  "  in  the  midst  of  protested 
bills,  business  annoyances,  the  most  cruel  financial 
straits,  in  utter  solitude  and  lack  of  all  consolation."  l 
But  it  may  well  be  that  just  such  a  spur  was  essential 
to  force  his  genius  to  rapid  development  and  steady  pro- 
duction. Under  more  favorable  auspices  a  man  of  his 
temper  would  surely  have  wasted  some,  perhaps  most, 
of  his  energy  on  forms  of  literature  to  which  his  tal- 
ent was  less  suited,  such  as  the  drama,  for  which  he 
had  always  a  predilection,  or  even  in  commerce  and 
politics,  with  which  his  books  show  continual  preoccu- 
pation. Circumstances  forced  his  talent  along  the  line 
of  least  resistance,  and  so  of  greatest  progress.  But 
though  he  was  never  free  from  the  spur  of  anxiety,  the 
great  tragedy  of  his  life  was  reserved  for  its  close. 
For  sixteen  years  he  had  loved  the  Countess  Hanska, 
and  when  at  last  all  obstacles  to  their  union  were 
overcome,  Balzac  was  sinking  under  the  disease  that  in 
a  few  months  cost  him  his  life. 

The  "  Come'die  humaine  "  is  like  a  tower  of  Babel  2 
that  the  hand  of  the  architect  had  not  and  could  never 
have  had  time  to  finish.  Some  walls  seem  ready  to 
fall  with  age.  The  builder  has  taken  whatever  mate- 
rial fell  to  his  hand,  plaster,  cement,  stone,  marble, 
even  sand  and  mud  from  the  ditch,  and  has  built  his 
gigantic  tower  without  heeding  always  harmony  of 
lines  or  balanced  proportions,  mingling  with  the  care- 

1  He  says  he  wrote  the  first  fifty  sheets  of  "  Les  Illusions  perdues" 
in  three  days,  and  "  La  Vieille  fille  "  in  the  same  interval.     "  La  Porte 
brisee,"  the  close  of  "  L'Enfant  maudit,"  was  "  composed  in  a  few 
hours  of  moral  and  physical  agony."     "  The  Secret  of  the  Ruggieri," 
"The  Atheist's  Mass,"  and  "  Facino  Cane,"  each  in  a  single  night. 

2  This  paragraph  follows  and  in  part  reproduces  a  sustained  meta- 
phor of  Zola,  op.  cit.  p.  3. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF   NATURALISM.      417 

less  power  of  genius  the  grandiose  and  the  vulgar,  the 
exquisite  and  the  barbarous,  the  good  and  the  bad. 
And  so  it  remains  to-day  one  of  those  Cyclopean 
monuments,  full  of  splendid  halls  and  wretched  cor- 
ners, divided  by  broad  corridors  and  narrow  passages, 
with  superpiled  stories  in  varied  architecture.  You 
may  lose  your  way  in  it  twenty  times,  and  always  feel 
that  there  are  still  undiscovered  miseries  and  splendors. 
It  is  a  world,  a  world  of  human  creation,  built  by  a 
marvellous  mason  who  at  times  was  also  'an  artist. 
Time  has  worn  holes  in  it.  A  cornice  has  fallen  here 
and  there,  but  the  marble  stands  whitened  by  time.  The 
workman  has  built  his  tower  with  such  an  instinct  of 
the  great  and  eternal  that  when  all  the  mud  and  sand 
has  been  washed  away,  the  monument  will  still  appear 
on  the  horizon  like  the  silhouette  of  a  city. 

It  is  impossible  here,  and  unnecessary  to  our  imme- 
diate purpose,  to  attempt  to  guide  the  reader  through 
all  these  corridors  and  passages,  into  all  the  chambers 
of  this  monument  of  imagination  and  industry,  that 
Taine  did  not  scruple  to  call  "  the  greatest  storehouse  of 
documents  on  human  nature  since  Shakspere,"  where 
"  the  secretary  of  society,"  as  Balzac  loved  to  call  him- 
self, has  undertaken  "  by  infinite  patience  and  courage 
to  compose  for  the  France  of  the  nineteenth  century 
that  history  of  morals  that  the  old  civilizations  of 
Korne,  Greece,  and  Egypt  left  untold,"  to  "  draw  up  the 
inventory  of  its  vices  and  virtues,"  and  to  lay  bare  the 
greed  and  social  ambition  that  seemed  to  him  the  main- 
spring of  its  multiplex  activities. 

The  mighty  maze  of  these  well-nigh  hundred  stories 
is  divided  by  Balzac  into  Scenes  of  Private  Life  and  of 
Parisian,  Provincial,  Political,  Military,  and  Country 
Life,  to  which  he  appends  groups  of  Analytical  and 

27 


418  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Philosophical  Studies ;  and  it  is  most  fruitful  to  follow 
this  division  in  a  study  of  his  genius,  for  an  attempt 
to  place  the  novels  in  the  order  of  their  internal  chro- 
nology would  involve  an  inextricable  confusion,  and 
little  is  gained  by  considering  the  order  in  which  they 
were  written,1  for  this  is  of  less  significance  with 
Balzac  than  with  most  great  authors. 

His  Scenes  of  Private  Life  are  naturally  stories  of 
ideals,  illusions,  tentative  efforts  of  young  men,  and 
of  ingenlious  maidenhood  and  motherly  pride.  In 
comparison  with  his  other  work  the  emotion  here  is 
less  strong,  and  the  characters  less  complex,  though 
this  section  includes  some  interesting  portraits  of  his 
contemporaries,2  and  a  tale  of  horror,  "  La  Grande 
Breteche,"  where  Balzac's  genius  shines  with  a  lurid 
glow  that  is  more  characteristic  of  his  Parisian  novels. 

Provincial  Life  offered  Balzac  a  broader  canvas  for 
the  more  constant  and  normal  types  of  human  nature, 
while  Paris  naturally  fostered  the  extreme  and  excep- 
tional. It  is  in  the  former  environment  that  the 
"  characteristic  little  facts  "  of  his  exact  realism  appear 

1  This  is  given  in  detail  in  Louvenjoul,  op.  cit.  pp.  315-328.     That  of 
the  masterpieces  is:  La  Peau  de  chagrin,  1830-1831  ;  Jesus  Christ  en 
Flandre,  1831;  Le  Colonel  Chabert,  1832;   Contes  drolatiques,  1832, 
1833,  1837;   La  Grande  Breteche,  1832;   Le  Cure  de  Tours,  1832; 
Louis  Lambert,  1832  ;   Eugenie  Grandet,  1833  ;  Ferragus,  1833  ;    La 
Duchesse   de  Langeais,    1834;    Seraphita,    1834;   La  Recherche    de 
1'absolu,  1834;   Le  Pere   Goriot,    1834;   Les  Illusions  perdues,  1837, 
1839,    1848;    Splendeurs  et  miseres  des  courtisanes,  1838-1847;   Un 
Menage  de  garfon,   1841-1842;  Les  Parents  pauvres  (Cousin  Pons, 
Cousine  Bette),  1846-1847. 

2  Camille  Maupin  in  "  Beatrix  "  combines  the  mind  of  George  Sand 
with  the  exterior  of  the  Romantic  actress,  Georges,  and  Claude  Vignou 
is  apparently  Balzac  himself.     Madame  Schonz  in  the  same  novel  is  a 
connecting  link  between  Hugo's  "  Marion   de  Lorme"and  Augier's 
"  Olympe."     In  "  Modeste  Mignon,"   Canalis  seems  compounded  of 
Chateaubriand  and  Lamartine,  though  he  flatters  neither. 


MODERN  FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF  NATURALISM.      419 

in  the  most  brilliantly  minute  descriptions,  though 
marred  at  times  by  diffuse  archaeology  in  their  local 
color.  It  is  in  his  Provincial  Scenes,  too,  that  Balzac 
touches  most  nearly  the  founder  of  the  new  Natural- 
ism, Flaubert.  Here  the  formation  of  character  that 
had  been  the  subject  of  the  previous  group  gives 
place  to  the  shock  of  characters  already  formed,  and 
money  replaces  love  as  the  mainspring  of  action. 

The  finest  novel  of  this  group,  if  not  of  the  whole 
series,  is  "  Eugdnie  Grandet,"  whose  heroine  is  Balzac's 
noblest  female  character,  while  the  book  itself  is  one 

I  of  the  most  powerful  studies  of  avarice  in  the  literature 
of  the  world.  And  hardly  second  to  the  psychological 
interest  is  the  graphic  power  of  epic  description  that 
gives  to  the  miser's  house  and  to  his  strong-room  the 
same  individualized  personality  that  Zola  has  bestowed 
on  the  mine  in  "  Germinal,"  or  the  locomotive  in  "  La 
Bete  humaine."  Each  detail  of  his  minute  description 
serves  to  mark  a  step  in  the  progress  of  Grandet's 
vice  toward  monomania.  There  was  in  this  miser, 
Balzac  says,  "  something  of  the  tiger  and  of  the  boa- 
constrictor.  He  could  lie  in  wait,  watch  his  prey, 
jump  on  it,  —  and  then  opening  the  jaws  of  his  purse 
he  would  swallow  a  pile  of  ecus,  and  lie  down  tran- 
quilly like  the  serpent  in  his  digestion,  impassive,  cold, 
methodical."  Step  by  step  his  passion  absorbs  his 
whole  being,  till  at  the  close  he  is  only  a  paralytic 
maniac,  clutching  in  his  death-struggle  the  crucifix  to 
» his  lips,  because  it  sparkles  with  gold,  and  gasping  to 
nhis  child  the  last  words :  "  You  will  have  to  give  an 
•laccount  hereafter  to  me  for  all  I  leave  you." 

No  other  novel  in  this  group  approaches  "  Eugenie 
Grandet ; "  but  several  have  a  place  in  the  develop- 
ment of  fiction.  Among  these  the  most  striking  is  the 


420  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

anti-clerical  "  Curd  de  Tours,"  the  first  of  a  series  of 
tales  of  like  tendency,  of  which  the  chief  are  Sue's 
"  Wandering  Jew  "  and  Fabre's  "  Abb4  Tigrane."  One 
sees  here  what  fears  seemed  justifiable  to  the  Liberals 
of  the  Eestoration,  and  one  comprehends  better  the 
over- wrought  excitement  of  Micheiet's  lectures  on  the 
Jesuits.  Mesmerism  too,  which,  as  recent  events  show, 
is  a  ghost  not  wholly  laid,  is  curiously  mingled  with 
the  realism  of  "  Ursule  Mirouet,"  and  had  indeed 
already  appeared  in  the  philosophic  studies  "  Se'raphita  " 
and  "  Louis  Lambert."  1 

But  it  is  by  his  Parisian  Scenes  that  Balzac  exer- 
cised the  greatest  influence  and  won  the  greatest  fame. 
"  Euge'nie  Grandet "  is  the  only  provincial  story  that 
will  rival  in  popular  regard  or  critical  favor  "  Le 
Pere  Goriot,"  "Les  Parents  pauvres,"  "Les  Illusions 
perdues,"  or  "Les  Splendeurs  et  miseres  des  courti- 
sanes."  The  general  average  is  higher  here,  and  the 
novels  are  more  closely  interlinked  by  recurring  char- 
acters. Some  of  these  are  indeed  products  of  a  purely 
romantic  imagination,  such  as  the  Vautrin  of  the 
"  Splendeurs ; "  others  are  the  result  of  minute  obser- 
vation, such  as  Goriot,  Rastignac,  Rubempre',  or  else 
prophetic  deductions  from  incipient  social  tendencies, 
such  as  De  Marsay,  the  skeptical  Uagueur,  "  who  be- 
lieved neither  in  men  nor  women,  in  God  nor  the 
devil,"  and  both  in  his  character  and  his  career  was  a 

1  "  Un  Menage  de  garpon,"  from  this  group,  an  uneven  book  with  an 
admirable  study  of  shifty  Parisian  poverty, -contains  in  Joseph  Bridau 
a  portrait  of  the  artist  Delacroix.  Among  these  Provincial  Scenes  is 
also  "  Le  Lys  dans  la  vallee,"  which  Faguet  thinks  "  the  worst  novel 
I  know."  Its  style  appears  to  Lanson  "  a  pasty  rigmarole,"  while 
Barriere  regards  it  as  "  Balzac's  most  elaborate  study  of  the  psychology 
of  love."  It  certainly  contains  some  of  its  author's  best  descriptive 
work. 


MODERN   FICTION. — EVOLUTION  OF   NATURALISM.      421 

strange  anticipation  of  the  Due  de  Morny.  So,  too,  his 
Madame  Marneffe  in  "  Cousine  Bette  "  is  the  archetypal 
study  of  the  "  Demi-monde,"  in  its  original  sense,  and 
the  Esther  of  the  "  Splendeurs  "  anticipates  Marguerite 
in  the  "  Dame  aux  came'lias."  Indeed  it  is  not  possi- 
ble here  even  to  name  all  the  characters  of  Balzac's 
Paris  that  have  left  their  mark  on  men's  minds,  so  that 
one  speaks  as  familiarly  of  a  Gobseck,  a  Goriot,  a 
Remonencq,  or  a  Bixiou  as  one  does  of  a  fable  of  La 
Fontaine  or  of  a  character  of  Eacine. 

As  novels  of  plot  the  "  Splendeurs,"  "  Ferragus,"  and 
the  "  Duchesse  de  Langleais  "  hold  the  highest  place  in 
the  "  Come'die  humaine  ; "  but  the  finest  psychological 
touches  are  to  be  sought  rather  in  "  Pere  Goriot "  and 
in  "Cousine  Bette."  Yet  the  short  stories  in  this 
group  are  also  remarkable.  "  Gobseck,"  a  worthy  pen- 
dant to  "  Eugenie  Grandet,"  contains  one  of  the  most 
successful  inspirations  of  the  shudder  in  literature, 
afterward  so  successfully  cultivated  by  Maupassant, 
and  "  Le  Colonel  Chabert "  is  a  masterpiece  of  powerful 
condensation.  Its  description  of  the  battle  of  Eylau 
bears  comparison  with  Me'rime'e's  "  Prise  de  la  redoute," 
and  it  might  be  hard  to  find  elsewhere  a  more  effective 
picture  of  the  dusty  purlieus  of  the  law,  which  Balzac 
says  would  be  the  most  awful  of  social  boutiques,  were 
it  not  for  "the  humid  sacristies  where  prayers  are 
weighed  and  sold  like  groceries,  and  the  second-hand 
dressmakers'  shops,  whose  frippery  "  blasts  all  the  illu- 
sions of  life  by  showing  where  its  festivals  end."  In 
his  duel  with  French  law  the  gallant  colonel's  reason 
fails,  and  the  story  leaves  him  a  pathetic,  harmless, 
hopeless  lunatic. 

This  story  revealed  great  powers  of  military  evoca- 
tion, and  it  seems  strange  that  his  Military  Scenes 


422  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

should  count  but  one  novel,  the  youthful  "  Chouans," 
and  the  curious  fragment  on  animal  fascination,  "  Une 
Passion  dans  le  de'sert."  Politics,  too,  bore  a  larger 
part  in  Balzac's  speculations  than  in  the  "  Corns' die 
humaine."  But  there  is  more  of  the  Christian  Socialist 
than  of  the  romancer  in  "  L'Envers  de  1'histoire  con- 
temporaine,"  or  in  its  country  pendant,  "  Le  Me'decin 
de  campagne."  The  author's  most  extreme  political 
views  are  in  the  study  of  "  Catherine  de  Me'dicis,"  and 
the  story  "  Z.  Marcas ; "  but  from  a  literary  point  of 
view  far  the  finest  of  the  Political  Scenes  is  "Une 
Episode  sous  la  terreur."  These  sociological  essays  are 
continued  in  the  Scenes  of  Country  Life,  among  which 
"  Les  Paysans  "  deals  with  peasant  proprietorship  in  a 
way  that  might  have  preserved  from  his  worst  error 
the  author  of  "  La  Terre,"  while  "  Le  Me'decin  de  cam- 
pagne "  is  interesting  chiefly  for  its  exhibition  of  the 
way  in  which  the  peasants,  and  perhaps  the  author, 
regarded  the  career  of  the  great  Napoleon. 

We  should  naturally  look  to  the  Philosophical  Studies 
for  Balzac's  most  sustained  efforts  in  the  analysis  of 
character,  which  here  tends  more  to  the  typical,  and 
so  lends  itself  peculiarly  to  moral  and  social  satire. 
Here,  too,  the  mystical  element  in  Balzac's  nature  finds 
its  most  unrestrained  expression  in  "  Louis  Lambert's  " 
speculations  on  the  will,  the  scientific  monomania 
of  "La  Eecherche  de  1'absolu,"  or  the  Swedenborg- 
inspired  ecstasies  of  "  Se'raphita."  Most  noteworthy 
in  this  group  is  "  La  Peau  de  chagrin/  a  study  of  the 
workings  of  ambition  in  the  hypersensitive  nature  of 
Eaphael,  who  struggles  in  the  thorny  hedge  of  reality, 
and  discovers  too  late  that  "' millionaires  are  their  own 
executioners,"  only  to  die  a  victim  of  fulfilled  desire. 
It  is  curious  to  contrast  the  insolent  luxury  of  Taillefer's 


MODERN  FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF   NATURALISM.      423 

feast  in  this  book  with  Petronius'  classic  realism  in  his 
feast  of  Trimalchio  (Petr.  Satyr.  30-78) ;  but  to  the 
thoughtful  reader  the  chief  interest  of  "  La  Peau  de 
chagrin "  lies  in  its  epigrammatic  scourging  of  the 
various  phases  of  satiety,  always  sombre  and  often 
profound.  Among  the  shorter  studies  in  this  group  is 
the  strangely  fascinating  "Je'sus  Christ  en  Flandre," 
whose  doctrine  is  :  "  Ask  nothing  great  from  interests, 
for  these  are  transitory.  Await  all  from  the  senti- 
ments, from  religion,  and  patriotic  faith."  l 

The  so-called  Analytical  Studies  are  in  reality  more 
or  less  immature  satires  on  marriage,  that  call  for  as 
little  notice  as  his  dramas,  of  which  "  Mercadet "  alone 
survives  in  the  repertory  of  the  National  Theatre. 
Not  so  the  "  Contes  drolatiques,"  which  reveal  Balzac 
more  completely  than  any  other  of  his  works,  —  the 
splendid  animal,  full-blooded,  expansive,  a  little  heavy, 
a  little  vulgar,  with  a  Eabelaisian  plainness  of  speech 
and  "laughter  shaking  both  his  sides,"  with  more 
delight  in  Gallic  than  in  Attic  salt.  Here,  and  per- 
haps here  only,  where  he  lets  himself  go  and  throws 
off  all  artificial  constraint,  his  style  becomes  at  times 
admirable  for  its  own  sake.  It  must  be  recognized, 
however,  that  the  "  Contes  "  are  as  ill  adapted  for  gen- 
eral reading  as  "  Pantagruel,"  and  that  fact  has  barred 
them  from  some  editions  and  most  translations  of 
Balzac's  works. 

1  This  group  shows  in  "  Melmoth "  the  influence  of  Goethe's 
"  Faust ;  "  in  "  Gambara  "  and  "  Massimila  Doni "  that  of  Stendhal. 
Hawthorne  has  imitated  "  I/Elixir  de  longue  vie,"  Zola's  "  L'GEuvre  " 
contains  exactly  the  thesis  of  "  Le  Chef  d'oeuvre  inconnu,"  Ohnet  has 
taken  from  "  Les  Marana  "  the  climax  of  "  Serge  Panine,"  and  Augier 
a  part  of  his  "  Maitre  Guerin"  from  "La  Recherche  de  1'absolu." 
The  shudder  in  literature  may  be  felt  again  in  "  El  Verdugo,"  and 
the  battle-scene  in  "  L' Adieu  "  rivals  that  in  "  Le  Colonel  Chabert." 


424  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

If,  now,  we  try  to  resume  the  characteristics,  and 
to  gain  a  final  impression  of  Balzac's  monumental 
work  that  may  serve  to  fix  his  place  in  the  literature 
of  the  century,  we  shall  be  struck  rather  with  the 
robust  fulness  of  his  mind,  the  feverish  activity  of 
his  imagination,  than  by  the  adequacy  of  the  expres- 
sion that  he  gave  to  it.  Ideas  never  failed  him,  but 
he  had  sometimes  "  the  vertigo  of  his  own  imagina- 
tion." He  occasionally  obscured  his  thought  by  an 
obtrusion  of  learning,  or  warped  it  by  prejudices 
that  we  associate  with  vulgar  minds.  His  trenchant 
and  heavy  satire  is  seldom  enlivened  by  the  play 
of  wit,  for  he  takes  his  task  most  seriously,  sure  that 
he  is  "  a  guiding  light,  or  at  least  a  physician  who 
gravely  feels  the  pulse  of  the  century."  So  by  his 
zeal  to  tell  us  not  only  what  he  sees,  but  what  he 
thinks  about  it,  he  misses  the  objectivity  of  the  later 
Naturalists.  They  are  consistent  philosophic  deter- 
minists  and  pessimists.  He  is  by  turns  a  cynical 
materialist  and  a  visionary  mystic. 

Balzac  had  to  a  remarkable  degree  the  power  of 
seeing  things  in  detail.  Each  face  had  to  him  its 
distinctive  feature,  and  he  preferred  an  individual- 
ized portrait  to  an  idealized  beauty.  In  a  similar 
way  he  specialized  inanimate  objects.  But  in  both 
cases  the  vividness  of  the  image  sometimes  hid  from 
the  author  the  associations  it  might  evoke  in  the 
reader;  hence  arise  lapses  of  taste  even  more  gro- 
tesque than  Hugo's,  especially  when  he  attempts  to  be 
delicate  or  sentimental.  For  he  leaves  no  class  of 
fiction  untried.  With  Protean  deftness  he  becomes 
by  turns  a  genuine  romantic  romancer,  in  the  style 
of  Anne  Radcliffe,  an  elegiac  and  mystic  romancer,  an 
admirable  realistic  novelist,  and  occasionally  so  grossly 


MODERN  FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF   NATURALISM.      425 

and  violently  realistic  that  he  ceases  to  be  realistic  at 
all.1  There  are  times  when  Balzac  seems  a  caterer  who 
has  undertaken  to  furnish  whatever  the  public  desires, 
in  the  style  that  it  prefers,  from  the  country  idyl  to 
the  detective  story.  But  one  always  feels  that  he 
is  more  at  home  with  Madame  Marneffe  than  with 
Seraphita.  His  Eomantic  side  was  the  result  of  envi- 
ronment. It  shows  least  of  his  individuality  and 
genius.  He  endures  by  his  power  of  minute  observa- 
tion, by  his  ability  to  paint  men  and  things  in  such 
detail  as  to  make  them  more  real  to  his  readers  than 
their  own  superficial  impressions.  We  feel  that  had 
Grandet  or  Goriot  been  our  neighbors  they  would  be 
less  understood,  less  individual  to  us,  than  Balzac  has 
made  them. 

Of  course,  such  a  talent  shows  itself  to  best  advan- 
tage in  that  social  sphere  with  which  both  author  and 
reader  are  most  in  touch  and  sympathy,  that  is,  with 
the  bourgeoisie,  or,  again,  with  such  classes  as  are  most 
under  the  dominance  of  environment  and  circum- 
stance, that  is,  with  artisans  and  laborers  as  well  as 
with  the  grossly  materialistic  and  criminal.  "  Vulgar 
natures,"  Balzac  writes  to  George  Sand,  "  interest  me 
more  than  they  do  you.  I  magnify  them,  idealize 
them  inversely  in  their  ugliness  or  folly,"  giving  them 
sometimes  "horrible  or  grotesque  proportions."  This 
distortion  of  naturalism  is  with  him,  as  with  Zola,  the 
result  of  inferring  character  from  action.  His  observa- 
tion is  correct,  but  the  constructive  psychology  that 
he  bases  on  it  is  faulty,  and  his  conclusions  are  exag- 
gerated.2 His  world  becomes  a  struggle  for  money 
and  place,  in  which  all  tender  sentiments  are  withered, 

1  Cp.  Faguet,  op.  cit.  pp.  417-420,  which  is  here  closely  followed. 

2  This  is  essentially  the  conclusion  of  Faguet,  op.  cit.  pp.  434-437. 


426  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

or  saved  as  by  fire.  Balzac's  experience  of  the  world 
made  him  skeptical.  He  had  seldom  seen  strength 
combined  with  the  gentler  virtues.  His  good  men 
and  women  —  Pons,  Schnmcke,  Henrietta,  Madame 
Bridau  —  are  victims  of  their  own  simple-heartedness, 
the  natural  prey  of  the  Marneffes,  the  Philippes,  and 
the  Remonencqs. 

The  "  Come'die  humaine  "  counts  in  Cerfbeer's  Keper- 
tory  two  thousand  actors.  Of  these  many  only  cross 
the  stage,  others  are  but  the  stuff  that  dreams  are  made 
of,  but  a  great  number  remain  that  have  an  individuality 
of  flesh  and  blood.  Most  of  these,  however,  like  the  per- 
sonages of  Dickens,  are  simpler  than  nature,  characters 
in  La  Bruyere's  sense,  not  balanced  studies  like  those 
of  Stendh'al  or  of  the  modern  psychological  school. 
They  are  centred  around  some  trait,  and  since  they 
admit  of  no  psychic  conflict,  they  lack  the  interest  that 
comes  of  moral  victory  or  defeat^?  When  occasionally 
Balzac  attempts  to  exhibit  such  an  inner  struggle,  he 
does  but  show  his  limitations,  yet  none  has  rendered  bet- 
ter than  he  the  great  conflict  of  classes  in  the  transition 
between  the  aristocratic  and  the  democratic  regime. 
None  saw  so  clearly  as  he  the  social  significance  of  the 
revolution  in  land  tenure  that  resulted  from  the  sale 
of  the  confiscated  domain  in  the  early  years  of  the 
Eepublic,  nor  the  disintegrating  fermentation  that  fol- 
lowed the  dispersion  of  the  Grande  Arme'e.1 

Among  Balzac's  contemporaries  George  Sand  owed 
the  inspiration,  though  not  the  development,  of  her 
studies  of  nature  and  country  life  to  his  example.  In 
the  next  generation  his  realistic  observation  served  as 
a  guide  to  the  early  efforts  of  Flaubert.  Through  him 
in  his  minute  observation,  and  directly  in  his  essen- 

v  i  Cp.  Faguet,  1.  c.  pp.  424-433. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF   NATURALISM.      427 

tially  Eomantic  exaggeration,  Balzac  has  been  a  power 
with  all  the  later  doctrinaire  Naturalists,  but  the 
Psychological  School  owes  less  to  his  method  or  ex- 
ample than  to  those  of  Stendhal.  -* — 

It  remains  to  speak  of  Merime'e,1  who  curiously 
unites  the  characteristics  of  Sand,  Stendhal,  and  Bal- 
zac. He  had  the  essentially  pessimistic  and  sombre 
observation  of  the  author  of  the  "  Come'die  humaine," 
the  picturesque  power  but  not  the  eighteenth-century 
buoyancy  of  Sand,  and  he  shared  with  Stendhal  a  keen 
psychological  insight  and  a  morbid  dread  of  being 
deceived  into  a  show  of  sympathy  where  none  was 
due.  But  to  all  this  he  joined  what  none  of  them  pos- 
sessed, —  a  high-bred,  impassive,  aristociatic  calm.  He 
was  always  courteous  and  obliging,  often  even  to  the 
extent  of  sacrifice,2  but  always  on  the  watch  to  restrain 
any  expression  of  emotional  interest  or  expansion  of 
heart.  Hence  in  his  writing  he  cultivated  the  most 
absolute  impersonality,  and  this  was  his  most  impor- 
tant contribution  to  the  following  generation. 

Me'rime'e  was  but  twenty-two  when  in  the  exuber- 
ance of  youth  he  imposed  on  the  exotic  taste  of  a  con- 
fiding public  his  "  Theatre  de  Clara  Gazul "  as  a  bit  of 

1  Born  1803;  died  1870.     He  was  Inspector  of  Historical  Monuments 
from  1831,  and  Senator  from  1853,  having  been  personally  attached  to 
the  family  of  Empress  Eugenie.     Chronology  of  his  principal  works : 
Theatre  de  Clara  Gazul,  1825;  LaGuzla,1826;  La  Jacquerie,  1828;  Le 
Chronique  de  Charles  IX.,  1829.     Short  stories,  —  among  them  Ta- 
mango,  La  Venus  d'llle,  Matteo  Falcone,  Colomba,  1830-1841  ;  Essai 
sur  la  guerre  sociale,  1841  ;  Carmen,  1847;  Les  Faux  Demetrius,  1854; 
Melanges   historiques   et    litteraires,  1855.     Four  volumes  of   letters 
have  been  posthumously  published. 

Criticism  :  Filon,  Me'rime'e  et  ses  amis ;  D'Haussonville,  Me'rime'e 
(reviewed  by  France,  Vie  litteraire,  ii.  47) ;  Faguet,  xix.  siocle ;  Lan- 
son,  p.  987;  and  Fortnightly  Review,  December,  1890.  Of  historic 
interest  is  Sainte-Beuve,  Portraits  contemporains,  ii.  361. 

2  See  Revue  bleue,  January,  1895. 


428  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

ultra-Spanish  dramatic  art,  and  that  with  such  success 
that  he  repeated  the  mystification  two  years  later  in 
the  pseudo-Illyrian  poems  of  "  La  Guzla."  Years 
afterward  Me'rime'e  explained  the  spirit  in  which  these 
two  books  were  written.  He  says  that  he  and  his 
Romantic  brethren  then  thought  "  there  was  no  salva- 
tion without  local  color,"  by  which  they  understood 
the  study  of  manners.  Hence  in  poetry  they  admired 
only  the  foreign  and  the  ancient.  Scotch  Border  Bal- 
lads or  the  "  Romancero  of  the  Cid  "  seemed  incompar- 
able masterpieces.  So,  in  order  to  get  money  to  study 
foreign  manners,  Me'rime'e  conceived  the  idea  of  evolv- 
ing them  from  his  imagination.  He  read  such  travels 
as  came  to  hand  and  an  opportune  government  report, 
"  learned  five  or  six  words  of  Slavonic,  and  wrote  the 
collection  of  ballads  in  a  fortnight,"  so  easily  that  he 
came  to  doubt  the  saving  grace  of  "  local  color  "  after 
all,  the  more  perhaps  as  certain  learned  German  lit- 
terati,  unwarned  by  their  experience  with  Ossian,  had 
discovered  in  these  pretended  translations  valuable 
contributions  to  folk-lore,  and  even  traces  of  the  prim- 
itive Dalmatian  metres,  until  at  last  the  simple  ana- 
gram of  Guzla  and  Gazul  dawned  on  their  minds,  and 
diverted  their  philological  acumen  to  less  obviously 
fruitless  labors. 

From  "  La  Guzla "  Me'rime'e  turned  to  mediaeval 
France,  from  the  exotic  to  the  semi-barbaric,  and  from 
poetry  to  prose.  He  wrote  of  the  Peasants'  War,  of  the 
Massacre  of  St.  Bartholomew,  and  in  "  La  Famille  de 
Carvajal  "  pushed,  perhaps  for  the  only  time,  fantastic 
horror  beyond  the  border  line  of  good  taste.  None  of 
these  stories,  however,  equalled  in  concentrated  power 
the  half-dozen  pages  of  "  La  Redoute,"  one  of  the  most 
finished  battle  pictures  in  literature  ;  nor  did  they  rival 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF   NATURALISM.      429 

the  grim  horror  of  "  Tamango,"  more  ghastly  than  any 
fancy  of  Poe,  or  of  the  most  morose  of  modern  pes- 
simists, and  all  the  more  grewsome  because  of  the 
writer's  ironic  calm.  "  One  must  be  humane,"  says 
the  proprietor  of  the  slave-ship  to  his  outfitter.  "  We 
ought  to  leave  a  negro  at  least  five  feet  by  two  to 
enjoy  himself  during  a  transit  of  six  weeks  or  more. 
After  all,  they  are  men,  like  the  whites."  In  other 
stories  of  this  period l  one  feels  oppressed  by  the  fatal- 
ism of  crime ;  and  to  this  the  "  Venus  of  Ille  "  adds 
an  element  of  demonology  of  which  there  is  indeed 
a  touch  in  all  Me'rime'e's  conceptions  of  love. 

Historical  and  antiquarian  studies  now  divided  his 
interest,  but  he  turned  his  travels  to  literary  account  in 
"  Colomba "  and  "  Carmen,"  the  latter  probably  still 
the  most  successful  treatment  of  the  Spanish  gypsy, 
the  former  surely  the  best  expression  of  the  Corsi- 
can  spirit,  of  its  rough  and  ready  justice,  its  sturdy 
independence  and  fierce  feuds.  Until  the  "  Mariage 
de  Loti,"  "  Colomba,"  in  spite  of  its  brevity,  for  it  counts 
but  two  hundred  pages,  was  without  a  rival  in  French 
fiction  for  its  rendering  of  primitive  emotions  and 
exotic  life. 

Me'rime'e  chose  for  his  device  the  Greek  motto  "  Re- 
member to  doubt."  All  his  work  breathes  a  profound 
disillusion.  One  feels  this  in  the  mystifications  of  the 
"  Gazul "  and  the  "  Guzla,"  in  the  quizzical  endings 
that  end  nothing  of  the  "  Chronicle  "  and  of  the  care- 
fully elaborated  "  Venus  of  Ille,"  and  most  of  all  in 
his  indifference  either  to  his  own  fame  or  to  the  gen- 
uineness of  the  impression  that  his  work  produces. 
Now,  such  an  attitude  is  hardly  professional,  and  per- 
haps it  is  not  unjust  to  say  that  Me'rime'e  was  always 

1  E.  g.,  La  Partie  de  tric-trac,  La  Vase  etrusque,  Matteo  Falcone. 


430  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

essentially  an  amateur,  whether  in  literature,  in  art,  01 
in  archaeology.  He  has  himself  said  that  in  the  arts 
one  can  excel  only  by  entire  surrender  to  them,  but 
that,  he  continues,  "  would  make  one  a  little  bete"  and 
bete  he  was  resolved  on  no  account  to  be. 

Me'rime'e's  interest,  like  Stendhal's,  lies  rather  in  men 
than  in  things.  Scenes  he  will  seldom  describe  save 
for  their  immediate  effect  on  the  action.  Then,  indeed, 
he  does  it  admirably.  Like  Stendhal  again,  he  affects 
situations  and  characters  that  give  free  play  to  pas- 
sion, but  he  differs  from  him  radically  in  the  precise 
concision  of  his  style.  If  the  scenes  of  his  tales  are 
for  the  most  part  foreign  or  strange,  Me'rime'e  is  still 
a  thorough  realist.  His  Spanish  gypsy  girl  seems 
wholly  natural  to  her  environment,  and  we  feel  that 
the  environment  itself  is  true  to  a  nature,  though  not 
to  ours.  So,  too,  he  has  the  art  to  persuade  us  that 
his  Colomba  is  the  natural  product  of  Corsican  training 
and  traditions,  and  we  feel  that  if  somewhere  out  of  our 
range  of  vision  there  are  outlaws,  smugglers,  untamed 
men  and  women,  then  this  will  be  a  true  picture  of 
that  "  border-land  between  culture  and  savagery." 

But,  in  spite  of  the  impersonality  he  cultivates, 
Me'rime'e's  naturalism  is  tinged  with  an  ironical  pes- 
simism. While  the  reader,  with  more  faith  than  he  in 
Mother  Nature,  is  looking  for  some  tender  sentiment, 
he  will  unveil  a  ghastlier  horror,  or  perhaps  express  a 
regret  that  "  assassination  is  no  longer  one  of  our 
social  usages."  Civil  war,  murder,  treachery,  or 
some  power  not  ourselves  that  makes  for  evil,  lies  at 
the  base  of  all  his  fiction,  though  toward  the  end  this 
tone  is  subordinated  to  the  growing  severity  of  his 
taste.1  He  never  ceased,  however,  "  to  despise  men  too 

1  It  hardly  tinged  "  Arsene  Guillot." 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  EVOLUTION   OF  NATURALISM.      431 

much  to  have  faith  in  their  progress ; "  and  so  he,  more 
even  than  Balzac,  promoted  the  pessimistic  weakening 
of  the  will  that  marks  a  considerable  section  of  the 
literature  of  the  fin  de  siecle. 

The  language  of  Me'rime'e  is  singularly  limpid  and 
pure,  simple  and  remarkable  for  its  sober  condensa- 
tion. It  has  been  compared  to  a  plate  of  glass  through 
which  all  that  he  wishes  to  show,  appears,  while  it  leaves 
itself  no  sensation.  But  if  the  attention  of  the  critic 
is  concentrated  on  it  one  observes  beneath  the  first  im- 
pression of  perfect  ease  and  naturalness  a  gradual 
revelation  of  art,  until  at  last  it  will  seem  as  though 
all  had  been  subordinated  to  an  aesthetic  purpose  that 
had  produced  its  full  effect  while  still  wholly  unrecog- 
nized at  the  very  first  reading.  Herein  lies  Me'rime'e's 
enduring  charm.  He  is,  among  the  novelists  of  his 
time,  pre-eminently  the  artist. 


432  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTEE   XII. 

MODERN  FICTION. —II.    THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL. 

BALZAC  and  his  fellows  had  inaugurated  the  study  of 
contemporary  life  in  fiction ;  but  both  he  and  they  had 
usually  been  diligent  to  seek  such  phases  of  it  as  had 
dramatic  interest,  and  to  arrange  their  observations  so 
as  to  heighten  this  effect.  That  departure  from  the 
normal  train  of  daily  life  was  a  concession,  perhaps  a 
fundamentally  necessary  concession,  to  Idealism  and  so 
to  Eomanticism ;  and  this  it  was  the  endeavor  of  the 
next  generation  at  all  cost  to  exclude.  Now,  in  so  far 
as  Naturalism  effects  a  closer  and  more  exact  observa- 
tion, a  simpler  and  more  robust  style,  it  is  the  natural 
and  healthy  reaction  from  Idealism,  for  these  are  the 
two  points  between  which  the  literary  needle  has 
swayed  since  the  beginning  of  literature.  But  the 
Naturalism  of  the  men  we  are  to  consider  went  much 
further  than  this.  Zola  announced  his  intention  "  to 
study  man  as  he  is,  not  your  metaphysical  jumping- 
jack,  but  the  physical  man,  determined  by  environ- 
ment, acting  under  the  play  of  all  his  organs."  "  What 
a  farce,"  he  continues,  "  is  this  continuous  and  exclu- 
sive study  of  the  functions  of  the  brain  !  .  .  .  What 
becomes  of  the  nobility  of  the  brain  if  the  belly  is 
sick  ? "  Hence  some  ardent  disciples  have  jumped  at 
the  conclusion  that  the  novel  was  not  to  be  psycho- 
logical but  abdominal ;  and  this  certainly  is  the  tendency 
of  these  "  slices  of  crude  life,"  this  topsy-turvy  idealism 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE    NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      433 

of  an  art  which  they  have  striven  to  make  wholly  im- 
personal, unsympathetic,  and  materialistic,  and  have  at 
least  succeeded  in  making  wholly  unnatural.  It  is  the 
function  of  criticism  to  show  that  these  men  who  have 
made  Naturalism  a  byword  were  false  Naturalists,  and 
that  it  was  because  they  were  false  Naturalists,  and 
only  in  so  far  as  they  were  false  Naturalists,  that  they 
discredited  Naturalism  in  discrediting  themselves. 

Flaubert l  marks  the  transition  from  Eomanticism 
to  this  phase  of  materialistic  realism.  He  exhibits 
exceptionally  the  continuity  of  literary  development 
through  reforms  and  changes  that  to  those  who 
preached  them  seemed  radical  and  revolutionary.  Not, 
indeed,  that  Flaubert  ever  associated  himself  with  the 
extreme  and  intolerant  claims  of  the  theoretic  doc- 
trinaire critics  of  his  school.  He  was  a  tolerant  ec- 
lectic who  combined  the  qualities  of  the  men  of  his 
youthful  admiration,  Hugo  and  Chateaubriand,  with 
those  of  his  own  disciples,  Zola  and  Maupassant. 
This  gives  his  work  its  peculiar  interest,  and  an  impor- 
tance greater  than  its  comparatively  small  bulk  might 
suggest. 

Flaubert  grew  up  in  the  heyday  of  the  Eomantic 
movement,  and  shared  its  enthusiasms  to  the  full.  Writ- 

1  Born  1821  ;  died  1880.  (Euvres,  8  vols.,  and  Correspondance,  4  vols. 
Chronology  of  the  more  important  novels:  Mme.  Bovary,  1857; 
Salammbo,  1862;  L'Education  sentimentale,  1869;  La  Tentation  de 
Saint- Antoine,  1874;  Trois  contes,  1877;  Bouvard  et  Pecuchet  (un- 
finished). 

Criticism:  Brunetiere,  Roman  naturaliste,  pp.  29  and  161;  Zola, 
Ilomanciers  naturaiistes,  pp.  125-223 ;  Bourget,  Essais,  p.  Ill  ;  Tarver, 
Flaubert  as  seen  in  his  Works  and  Correspondence;  Spronck,  Les 
Artistes  litteraires,  239 ;  Sainte-Beuve,  Causeries,  xiii.  346 ;  Pellissier, 
op.  cit.  p.  326  ;  Lanson,  op.  cit.  p.  1047.  Saintsbury,  Essays  on  French 
Novelists,  offers  a  mild  antidote  to  some  opinions  expressed  here  and 
in  chapters  v.  and  xiii.  See  also  Huueker,  Egoists,  pp.  104-138. 

28 


434  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

ing  of  1840,  he  says:  "Our  dreams  in  college  days .  _ 
were  superbly  extravagant,  the  last  full  flowering  of 
Eomanticism,  .  .  .  maintained  by  a  provincial  environ- 
ment and  making  strange  ebullitions  in  our  brains.  8  .  . 
We  were  not  only  troubadours,  rebels,  Orientals ;  we 
were,  more  than  all,  artists.  Our  school  tasks  over, 
literature  began.  We  put  out  our  eyes  reading  novels 
in  the  dormitory ;  we  carried  daggers  in  our  pockets.  .  .  . 
One  of  us  blew  out  his  brains  ;  another  hung  himself 
by  his  cravat.  .  .  .  What  hatred  we  had  of  the  com- 
monplace ;  what  aspirations  to  grandeur ;  what  respect 
for  the  masters  ;  how  we  admired  Hugo  !  " l 

Flaubert  never  lost  sight  of  his  Eomantic  ideals  ;  but 
they  had  fallen  on  unromantic  times,  and  mocked  him 
so  constantly  that  the  vulgarity  of  life  became  at  last 
his  all-absorbing  thought,  and  his  contempt  of  the 
bourgeoisie  a  passionate  hatred  that  he  devoted  his 
whole  life  to  express  in  a  form  whose  perfection  should 
make  it  an  enduring  monument  of  human  pettiness. 
This  thought  runs  like  a  red  thread  through  all  his 
novels,  whether  the  scene  be  a  Norman  town  or  an- 
cient Carthage,  the  Paris  of  the  Second  Republic  or 
the  Egyptian  hermitages  of  the  Thebaid.  Everywhere 
and  always  to  strive  for  the  ideal  is  to  invite  the 
heart-sickness  of  disillusion. 

Flaubert  is  then  a  Romantic  pessimist,  —  a  species 
that  has  tended  not  a  little  to  confuse  the  popular 
conception  of  pessimism  itself.  His  pessimism  is  a 
sentiment.  "  Strange,"  he  says,  "  that  I  was  born  with 
so  little  faith  in  happiness.  Even  as  a  boy,  I  had  a 
complete  presentiment  of  life.  It  was  like  tho  smell 
of  a  nauseating  kitchen  escaping  through  a  ventilating 
hole.  One  had  no  need  to  taste  to  know  that  it  wa^M 

1  Condensed  from  Bourget's  citation,  1.  c.  p.  130. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      435 

sickening."  If  he  is  to  be  judged  by  his  fiction,  he 
regarded  reading,  and  indeed  intellectual  progress  gen- 
erally, as  likely  to  increase  the  evils  of  life.  All  his 
protagonists  are  nursed  on  literature.  Books  and 
meditation  turn  the  brains  of  his  Saint  Antony  and  of 
his  Emma  Bovary,  his  Fre'de'ric  is  the  victim  of  a 
"  sentimental  education,"  and  Salammbo  has  drunk 
deep  of  the  legends  of  her  people. 

This  pessimistic  cast  of  mind  produced  in  Flaubert, 
as  it  often  has  in  others,  a  passion  for  formal  beauty. 
The  union  in  him  of  a  deep  poetic  feeling  with  the 
keen  analytic  spirit  l  produced  a  bitter  sense  of  dis- 
proportion between  what  might  be  arid  what  is ;  and 
this  made  his  literary  composition  labored  and  slow  to 
a  degree  that  has  become  proverbial.  Six  years  was 
the  average  interval  between  his  longer  novels,  and  he 
spent  a  score  in  elaborating  the  "  Temptation  of  Saint 
Antony."  He  made  minute  studies,  accumulated  huge 
masses  of  notes.  For  an  episode  of  a  few  pages  he 
might  consult  a  hundred  volumes.  And  he  was  as 
meticulous  in  regard  to  form  as  to  matter.  Each  para- 
graph was  subjected  to  repeated  scrutinies,  obtrusive 
relatives  were  sedulously  banished,  the  recurrence  of 
vowel  or  consonant  sounds  was  sought  or  avoided, 
and  the  melody  of  each  sentence  tested  by  loud  dec- 
lamation until  it  was  attuned  to  satisfy  his  sensitive 
ear.  He  cited  with  approval  the  doctrine  of  Buffon, 
that  "the  beauties  of  style  are  truths  as  useful,  and 
perhaps  more  precious,  for  the  public  than  those  con- 
tained in  the  subject  itself ; "  and,  following  to  their 
logical  conclusion  the  aesthetics  of  pessimism,  with  an 
instinct  of  harmony  that  he  caught  from  Chateaubriand, 
he  resolved  to  base  a  purely  objective  art  on  the  ruins 

1  Cp.  Bourget,  op.  cit.  p.  136. 


436  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

of  Romanticism,1  and  proclaimed  the  paradox :  "  Art, 
having  its  reason  in  itself,  should  not  be  regarded  as  a 
means,"  —  a  view  from  which  he  deduced  a  severely  ob- 
jective impersonality  in  his  fiction  that  differentiated 
it  sharply  from  Romanticism  and  made  it  a  model  for 
the  generation  nursed  in  the  scientific  determinism  of 
Taine. 

For  "  Madame  Bovary  "  is  the  illustration  in  fiction 
of  Taine's  psychology  and  literary  criticism,  and  that 
is  what  gives  it  its  cardinal  significance  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  modern  novel.  Flaubert's  characters  may 
be,  as  Bourget  has  called  them,  "  walking  associations 
of  ideas ; "  but  they  are  not,  like  the  creations  of  Sten- 
dhal, abstractions  projected  against  space.  They  are 
psychologically  much  more  superficial,  but  they  are 
fixed  in  an  environment  of  precise  and  definite  "sig- 
nificant little  facts,"  which  are,  it  must  be  confessed, 
occasionally  surcharged  with  superfluous  erudition. 
Thus  Flaubert,  more  than  Chateaubriand  and  more 
than  any  of  the  later  Naturalists,  combined  so  much  as 
he  discerned  of  psychological  reality  with  its  physical 
conditions  and  manifestations :  he  illustrated  thoughts 
by  material  images,  and  systematically  substituted 
sensation  for  feeling,  the  image  for  the  idea.2  He 
therefore  habitually  called  on  environment  to  direct 
thought  and  evoke  past  experience,  and  so  he  intro- 
duced into  modern  fiction  a  device  that,  especially  in 
the  hands  of  Daudet,  has  added  greatly  to  the  rapidity 
with  which  the  action  of  a  novel  may  be  developed. 

Flaubert  also  parted  company  with  Romantic  meth- 
ods by  the  complete  suppression  of  all  exaggeration 

1  See  his  letters  from  1850  to  1855,  passim,  and  Brunetiere,  Poesie 
lyrique,  ii.  128. 

2  Cp.  Brunetiere,  op.  cit.  p.  171. 


MODEKN   FICTION.  —  THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      437 

in  scene  or  character.  He  avoided  all  complication  of 
plot  or  intrigue.  His  stories  owe  their  interest  to  re- 
productive, not  to  creative  imagination.  He  seeks  to 
present  life  in  its  manifold  complexity,  not  to  say  in 
its  petty  puerility,  as  fully  and  as  truly  as  possible ; 
therefore  in  modern  life  he  takes  types  |f  the  mediocre, 
the  commonplace,  the  vulgar,  with  a  self-tormenting 
devotion  to  his  theory  of  art ;  for  he  hated  the  char- 
acters that  he  drew,  and  his  natural  sympathies  were 
so  romantically  effervescent  that  he  was  seldom  able 
to  restrain  them  in  the  society  of  his  literary  intimates. 
He  has  spoken  of  himself  as  of  one  with  nerves  laid 
bare,  who  shudders  at  the  touch  of  the  vulgarity  he 
delights  to  pillory  ;  and  after  each  accomplished  task 
he  sought  an  opportunity  to  "roar  his  fill"  in  some 
exotic  scene.  So  "  Salammbo  "  follows  "  Madame  Bo- 
vary,"  and  the  "  Temptation  "  succeeds  "  I/Education 
sentimentale  "  ;  so,  too,  in  his  "  Trois  contes  "  he  repaid 
himself  for  the  restraint  of  "  Coeur  simple  "  by  "  He'ro- 
dias  "  and  "  Saint- Julien  1'hospitalier,"  and  if  he  had 
completed  "  Bouvard  et  Pe'cuchet,"  it  was  his  intention 
to  ease  himself  of  that  monument  to  human  stupidity 
by  a  tale  of  Leonidas  and  Thermopylae. 

"  Madame  Bo  vary  "  is  the  story  of  a  wife  educated 
beyond  her  station,  whose  unfulfilled  romantic  aspira- 
tions drag  her  step  by  step  to  the  depths  of  vulgar  in- 
fidelity, so  that  at  last  suicide  seems  her  only  refuge 
from  moral  nausea.  This  warning  against  trie  dangers 
of  romantic  sentiment  is  enforced  by  photographic  pic- 
tures of  bourgeois  life  in  its  banality,  true  masterpieces 
of  suppressed  irony.  Even  the  minor  characters  are 
drawn  with  remarkable  vividness ;  and  one  of  them,  the 
druggist  Homais,  has  become  a  byword  for  provincial 
and  philistine  narrowness. 


438  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Flaubert's  first  novel  was  at  once  type  and  model 
for  the  fiction  of  the  next  generation.  It  was  the 
most  easily  comprehended  and  by  far  the  most  popular 
of  his  books,  the  first  of  the  minute,  passionless  repro- 
ductions of  the  platitudes  of  modern  life.  But  it  was 
not  a  favorite  with  Flaubert,  and  in  later  years  he 
was  wont  to  speak  of  it  as  a  youthful  error,  for  he 
thought  that  the  close  conceded  too  much  to  the. 
Komantic  spirit.  So  in  "  Sentimental  Education  "  he 
carefully  eliminated  all  such  appeals  to  emotion. 
Here  the  tragic  end  is  not  suicide,  but  the  slow  wear- 
ing away  of  ideals  under  the  corroding  experiences  of 
life,  the  abandonment  of  one  ambition  after  another, 
and  the  result,  Flaubert's  social  hell,  the  monotonous 
respectability  of  a  provincial  town.  This  study  of  politi- 
cal and  social  psychology  is  a  microscopic  dissection 
of  human  incapacity  conducted  with  labor  and  patience 
that  bear  witness  to  the  morose  intensity  of  the 
author's  incivism.  But  Flaubert  might  have  remem- 
bered what  he  himself  had  said,  that  "  disillusion 
belongs  naturally  to  weak  minds,"  and  that  "  the  dis- 
gusted are  almost  always  impotent ; "  so  this  book, 
though  it  does  not  lack  powerful  pages,  lacks  interest 
and  kindly  humor  because  it  lacks  sympathy.  It  has 
found  admirers  among  the  writers,  but  few  among  the 
readers,  of  fiction. 

In  these  stories  Flaubert  found  vent  for  his  anti- 
social spleen ;  in  "  Salammbo "  he  gave  wings  to  his 
sombre  lyric  imagination.  He  told  Sainte-Beuve  that 
in  this  tale  of  life  at  Carthage  in  the  days  of  its 
splendor  "he  wished  to  fix  a  mirage  by  applying  to 
antiquity  the  methods  of  the  modern  novel."  So  he 
studied  the  scenery  on  the  spot,  and  exhausted  the 
resources  of  the  Imperial  Library  in  his  search  for 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      439 

documentary  evidences,  which  he  fused  by  a  vast  and 
sustained  effort  into  a  complete  and  consistent  evoca- 
tion that  makes  this  realistic  epic  the  best  historical 
novel  of  the  half-century  in  France.  But  the  under- 
lying thesis  is  unchanged.  Ideals  and  aspirations  are 
still  wrecked,  and  drag  down  those  who  cherish  them. 
Yet  there  is  none  of  the  complexity  of  modern  life. 
Salammbo's  mystic  fatalism  owes  its  charm  to  its  ab- 
solute simplicity.  The  heroine  is  indeed,  as  Flaubert 
said,  "  a  monomaniac,  a  kind  of  Saint  Theresa,  nailed 
to  a  fixed  idea."  It  is  perhaps  from  this  very  simpli- 
city that  the  characters  impress  the  reader  less  than 
the  descriptions.  The  story  and  its  personages  leave 
less  mark  on  the  mind  than  the  charge  of  the  elephants, 
the  orgy  of  the  mercenaries,  or  the  long  agony  of  their 
destruction. 

For  twenty  years  the  "  Temptation  of  Saint  Antony  " 
was  Flaubert's  favorite  task.  Here  he  sought  to  spread 
before  the  reader,  in  a  vision  of  the  Egyptian  hermit, 
the  vast  panorama  of  the  joy  of  sense  and  intellect 
turning  to  dust  and  ashes.  In  mad  procession,  all 
deities,  religions,  heresies,  philosophies,  are  exhibited, 
mocked,  and  cast  into  the  limbo  of  scornful  rejection. 
Then  at  last  Satan  shows  the  saint  the  horizon 
of  modern  science,  from  whose  immensity  he  shrinks 
in  terror.  Antony  seeks  refuge  from  the  crushing 
weight  of  knowledge  in  the  animal,  the  vegetable 
world ;  and  as  the  night  of  his  temptation  ends,  he  is 
endeavoring  to  bury  his  being  in  primordial  matter. 
Then  in  the  rising  sun  appears  the  image  of  the  Cruci- 
fied, and  Antony  betakes  himself  to  prayer.  "  To 
take  humanity  in  its  cradle,  to  show  it  at  every  hour 
in  blood  and  filth,  to  note  with  care  each  error,  to 
deduce  thence  its  impotence,  misery,  and  emptiness, 


440  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

—  such  was  Flaubert's  cherished  and  slowly  matured 
aim."  But  while  this  is  surely  his  most  learned  and 
thoughtful  work,  it  demands  in  the  reader  too  much 
learning  and  thought,  and,  above  all,  too  much  of  the 
author's  own  spirit,  to  enjoy  a  wide  popularity.  A  time 
may  come  when  this  will  seem  Flaubert's  masterpiece. 
To  us  it  is  by  "Madame  Bovary"  that  he  marks  an 
epoch  in  French  fiction. 

Edmond  and  Jules  de  Goncourt J  show  the  same 
delight  in  minute  observation  as  Flaubert;  while  in 
them  his  elaboration  of  style  becomes  a  tortured 
artificiality,  a  painful  striving  to  translate  the  shades 
of  thought  and  emotion  into  language.  They  began 
their  literary  career  with  appreciative  studies  of  the 
art  and  manners  of  the  eighteenth  century,  exhibiting 
an  immense  accumulation  of  details,  but  little  power 
of  historical  evocation.  Then  in  the  last  decade  of 
the  Empire  they  published  six  novels;  and  since 
Jules'  death  Edmond  continued  their  joint  work  in 


1  Edmond,  b.  1822,  d.  1896 ;  Jules,  b.  1830,  d.  1870,  wrote  together 
the  novels:  Charles  Demailly,  1860;  Sreur  Philomene,  1861;  Renee 
Mauperin,  1864;  Germinie  Lacerteux,  1865;  Manette  Salomon,  1867; 
Madame  Gervaisais,  1869.  Historical  studies:  Histoire  de  la  socie'te 
francaise  (Revolution  et  directoire),  1854-1855;  La  Revolution  dans 
les  moeurs,  1854;  Portraits  intimes  du  xviii.  siecle,  1856-1858;  Marie 
Antoinette,  1858  ;  Les  Maitresses  de  Louis  XV.  (Du  Barry,  Pompadour, 
Chateauroux,  et  ses  soeurs)  1860,  and  1878-1879  ;  La  Femme  au  xviii. 
siecle,  1862;  L'Art  au  xviii.  siecle,  1874;  L'Amour  au  xviii.  sit-de, 
1877.  Since  Jules'  death  Edmond  has  published  the  novels:  La  Fille 
Elisa,  1878;  Les  Freres  Zemganno,  1879;  La  Faustin,  1882;  Che'rie, 
1884.  Historical  studies:  Watteau,  1876;  Prud'hon,  1877;  Les  Ac- 
trices  au  xviii.  siecle,  1885-1890.  Autobiography  :  Journal  (7  vols.), 
1887-1894. 

Criticism  :  Delzant,  Les  Goncourt ;  Spronck,  Les  Artistes  litteraires, 
137;  Doumic,  Portraits  d'ecrivaius,  167;  Lemaitre,  Contemporains, 
iii.  37 ;  Brunetiere,  Roman  naturaliste,  p.  273 ;  Zola,  Romanciers 
naturalistes,  p.  223 ;  Bourget,  Nouveaux  essais. 


MODERN  FICTION.  —  THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      441 

each  field,  though  with  somewhat  slackened  energy,  and, 
by  the  publication  of  their  Journal  and  his  own,  has 
thrown  a  welcome  though  sometimes  indiscreet  light 
on  the  group  of  writers  who  looked  to  him  as  their 
doyen.  But  it  is  their  novels  produced  jointly  that 
affected  the  development  of  fiction,  and  of  these  only 
is  it  necessary  to  speak  here. 

They  began  with  "  Charles  Demailly,"  —  a  satiric 
picture  of  petty  journalism  in  the  spirit  of  Balzac's 
"  Illusions  perdues,"  minutely  realistic  save,  perhaps, 
for  the  wit  with  which  they  have  generously  endowed 
these  gentry  of  a  muzzled  press.  Then,  in  "  Sosur  Philo- 
mene"  they  extended  the  borders  of  fiction  to  the 
hospital  and  clinic,  with  all  their  tortured,  quivering 
life,  —  a  dangerous  step  toward  that  topsy-turvy  Idealism 
that  makes  the  fancy  delve  where  the  Eomanticists 
had  let  it  soar.  In  "  Eende  Mauperin  "  they  returned 
to  the  bourgeoisie  and  to  pseudo-respectability.  This 
is  a  study  of  the  "  struggle  for  life  "  in  a  commercial 
and  democratic  society, — a  subject  to  which  Edmond 
recurred  in  "  La  Faustin  "  and  "  Che'rie,"  declaring  the 
former  to  be  "  a  psychological  and  physiological  study 
of  the  young  girl  growing  up  and  educated  in  the 
hot-house  atmosphere  of  the  capital,"  while  the  latter 
was  to  be  "  a  monograph  of  the  young  girl  observed 
in  the  environment  of  wealth,  elegance,  power,  and  the 
best  society." 

"  Eenee  "  is  thought  by  many  to  be  the  best  of  the 
Goncourts'  novels,  and  is  certainly  that  from  which 
Daudet  learned  an  important  part  of  his  art.  But  the 
writers  of  their  own  school  caught  more  inspiration 
from  "  Germinie  Lacerteux,"  which,  indeed,  its  authors 
regarded  as  "  the  model  of  all  that  has  since  been 
constructed  under  the  name  of  Eealism  or  Naturalism." 


442  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

What  they  meant  appears  from  the  preface  to  the 
book  itself.  "  We  asked  ourselves,  are  there  still,  for 
writer  or  reader  in  these  years  of  our  social  equality, 
classes  too  unworthy,  misfortunes  too  base,  dramas 
too  foul,  catastrophes  too  ignoble  in  their  terror,"  to 
be  a  fit  subject  for  literary  treatment  ?  "  In  a  country 
without  caste  or  legal  aristocracy  will  the  miseries  of 
the  humble  and  poor  appeal  to  your  interest,  emotion, 
pity,  as  loudly  as  the  miseries  of  the  great  and  rich  ? " 
This  question  they  endeavored  to  solve  for  themselves 
by  pursuing  the  shaft  they  had  sunk  in  "  Soeur  Philo- 
m&ne"  still  deeper  into  the  sub-strata  of  society. 
Their  "  Germinie  "  is  the  true  source  and  ante-type  of 
"  Nana  "  and  "  L' Assommoir  "  and  all  their  numerous 
progeny.  We  have  here  what  purports  to  be  "  a  clinic 
of  love"  as  demonstrated  upon  the  body  of  a  servant- 
girl,  more  sinned  against  than  sinning,  a  festering  lily, 
type  of  so  many  who  in  our  social  system  "  find  on 
earth  no  more  place  for  their  bodies  than  for  their 
hearts ;  "  and,  as  though  to  push  to  its  utmost  para- 
dox the  divorce  they  proclaimed  between  fiction 
and  respectability,  Edinond  afterward  took  for  the 
subject  of  his  "Fille  Elisa"  a  prostitute  from  the 
street. 

After  "Germinie"  these  zealots  of  Naturalism  grew 
more  extreme  in  their  wish  to  present  nature  un- 
adorned and  unarranged.  They  discarded  all  the  con- 
ventions of  structure,  so  that  their  books  ceased  to 
have  or  indeed  to  seek  artistic  unity.  They  became 
series  of  very  slightly  connected  pictures,  each  exe- 
cuted with  masterly  exactness,  and  counting  among 
them  some  of  the  greatest  tours  de  force  in  impression- 
ist prose.  But  the  general  result  of  this  relentless 
adherence  to  "  observation  "  and  the  "  little  facts  "  is, 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      443 

as  Zola  admits,  to  "  sterilize  their  human  documents," 
and  to  deny  the  reader  an  element  of  interest  that  the 
somewhat  remarkable  Jiors  d'ceuvres  in  metaphysics 
and  archaeology  l  are  far  from  supplying,  for  here  the 
Goncourts  hardly  see  clearly  beyond  their  favorite 
eighteenth  century. 

In  all  these  novels,  as  in  those  of  Flaubert,  the 
observation  is  superficial,  external,  and  dwelling  with 
peculiar  insistence  on  morbid  manifestations.  So  far 
did  this  become  a  second  nature  that  when  Jules  lay 
dying  his  brother  noted  each  symptom  of  mental  decay, 
and  afterward  published  his  observations,  thinking 
"  that  it  might  be  useful  for  the  history  of  letters  to 
give  this  grim  study  of  the  agony  and  death  of  a  man 
who  died  of  literature."  There  was  in  their  method 
and  spirit  something  of  the  painter's  "life  school." 
"  Write  what  you  see,"  was  their  guiding  principle,  by 
which  they  claimed  that  they  could  bring  into  a  char- 
acter "  the  genuine  life  that  they  got  from  ten  years' 
observation  of  a  living  being."  Edmond  declares 
"  Che'rie  "  the  result  of  innumerable  notes  taken  with 
an  opera-glass,  and  "  Germinie  "  a  documentary  embryo 
from  their  joint  note-books.  "Nowadays,"  says  the 
preface  to  this  novel,  "fiction  is  beginning  to  bo 
the  serious,  passionate,  living  form  of  literary  study 
and  social  investigation ;  by  its  psychological  analysis 
and  research  it  becomes  the  history  of  contemporary 
morals."  In  this  it  seemed  to  them  to  realize  what 
Balzac  had  attempted  and  Taine  desired ;  but  it  must 
be  borne  in  mind  that,  like  Flaubert,  they  habitually 
neglected  psychological  for  external  realism,  that  they 

1  E.  g.,  in  "  Madame  Gervaisais,"  where,  indeed,  the  slow  corrosion 
by  religious  enthusiasm  of  a  mind  burdened  with  culture  is  traced 
with  much  skill,  and  invites  comparison  with  Daudet's  "  I/ifevangeliste." 


444  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

merged  individuality  in  fatalistic  determinism,  and  so 
gave  the  first  strong  expression  in  fiction  to  the  lessen- 
ing of  will-power  that  marks  the  French  literature 
of  the  past  generation.  Their  pessimism,  even  more 
than  Flaubert's,  was  less  rational  than  emotional.  It 
was  an  artistic  convention,  not  a  living  conviction. 
Flaubert's  realism  was  the  product  of  study  and  books ; 
theirs  had  a  touch  of  the  reporter,  of  the  chiffonnier  of 
human  documents,  whose  work  is  done  not  at  his 
desk,  but  on  the  street  and  at  the  public  gathering. 
One  notices  this  especially  in  their  conversations, 
which  reflect  admirably  the  skeptical  Hague  of  the 
Parisian  boulevardier. 

"What  differentiates  modern  from  ancient  litera- 
ture," they  tell  us,  "  is  that  the  particular  tends  to 
replace  the  general."  From  this  point  of  view  the 
Goncourts  were  the  most  modern  of  the  moderns. 
But  there  are  inevitable  flaws  in  the  method,  for  the 
more  the  novel  is  made  to  approximate  to  experi- 
mental science,  the  more  it  must  sacrifice  the  interest 
that  comes  from  imagination  as  well  as  from  plot  and 
intrigue.  Their  intensity  of  observation,  "  more  sensi- 
tive than  intelligent,"  left  little  play  for  fancy  in 
the  reader,  and  made  its  possessors  feel,  they  said,  as 
though  their  flesh  were  flayed  and  quivering.  They 
were  fascinated,  like  Taine,  by  extreme  conditions  and 
the  morbid  nervous  states  peculiar  to  the  high  pres- 
sure of  modern  society,  and  their  own  style  shows 
how  this  nervous  tension  reacted  on  the  writers 
themselves.  It  is  in  fiction  what  Symbolism  is  in 
poetry,  and  Impressionism  in  modern  painting.  Indeed, 
the  Goncourts  are  above  all  else  artists  in  words. 
They  seek  to  fix  a  series  of  sensations  by  a  series  of 
images,  and  care  more  for  what  they  call  "  the  nota- 


MODERN  FICTIOX. — THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      445 

tion  of  indescribable  sensations,"  for  "  pinning  the  adjec- 
tive," for  a  striking  turn  of  expression,  a  vivid  picture 
or  epithet,  than  for  grammatical  structure  or  rhetorical 
correctness.  But  this  is  as  much  as  to  say  that  they 
subordinated  clear  statement  to  suggestion,  substance 
to  form,  the  exception  to  the  rule ;  and  in  so  far  they 
too  were  Romanticists  and  false  to  the  truer  Naturalism 
to  which  they  imagined  themselves  martyrs.  For  so 
strange  a  style  disconcerted  and  repelled  the  great 
public ;  and  when  these  would  not  buy  or  praise,  the 
Goncourts  persuaded  themselves  and  others  that  popu- 
lar applause  and  its  rewards  were  marks  of  mediocrity. 
They  chose  to  live  for  their  art  alone  and  for  the 
choice  spirits  who  could  comprehend  them.  Thus 
they  became  "  literary  mandarins,"  and  so  contributed 
to  set  a  fashion  that  has  done  vast  harm  to  recent 
French  literature,  which  for  some  years  became  es- 
tranged, to  their  mutual  injury,  from  the  great  pub- 
lic, whose  favorite  authors,  with  Ohnet  at  their  head, 
hardly  belong  to  literature  at  all,1  while  the  popular- 
ity of  Zola,  whom  they  claimed  for  their  pupil,  was  due 
more  to  qualities  that  contradict  their  teaching  than  to 
those  that  accord  even  with  his  own.  It  was  not  till 
late  in  the  seventies  that  the  success  of  that  enfant 
terrible,  attracted  attention  to  his  masters,  and  the 
public  began  to  read  as  literary  documents  what  they 
had  neglected  as  novels.  But  others  also  had  gone 
with  Zola  to  this  school  with  equal  interest  and  more 
immediate  and  varied  results  than  had  been  pro- 
duced by  students  of  the  epoch-marking  rather  than 
epoch-making  "Madame  Bovary."  Zola  and  his  fol- 
lowers will  show  us  how  this  perverted  Naturalism  is 
but  Romanticism  in  disguise. 

1  Daudet  is  of  course  an  exception. 


446  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

Emile  Zola1  was  surely  the  greatest  among  the 
sombre  students  of  the  base  in  modern  French  life. 
Born  of  Venetian  stock,  and  nursed  under  the  warm 
sun  of  Provence,  he  had  the  hyperbolic  imagination  of 
his  ancestry  and  youthful  environment,  both  stimulated 
by  a  boyhood  of  privation  that  ended  with  a  petty 
clerkship  in  the  great  publishing-house  of  Hachette, 
where  Zola  spent  his  scanty  leisure  in  the  hack-work 
of  journalism,  and  distinguished  himself  by  a  zealous 
defense  of  the  eccentric  naturalistic  painter,  Edouard 
Manet.  His  juvenile  w6rk  is  interesting,  for  it  shows 
that  he  who  was  to  dominate  French  fiction  for  more 
than  a  decade,  was  not  in  his  early  novels  abreast  of 
the  time.  "  The  Mysteries  of  Marseilles  "  and  the  first 
"Contes  a  Ninon"  suggest  far  more  the  "Wandering 
Jew  "  than  they  do  "  Madame  Bovary."  The  first  hint 
of  later  achievements  is  in  "  La  Confession  de  Claude," 
which,  however,  pales  before  the  terrible  analysis  of 
remorse  in  "  The'rese  Eaquin,"  whose  best  pages  he  has 
never  surpassed  for  intensity  and  minute  vision,  while 
they  announce  also  the  morose  and  sombre  pessimism 
of  "  L' Assommoir  "  and  "  Germinal."  His  next  story, 

1  Born  1840,  died  1902.  Chronology  of  the  more  important  fiction  : 
Les  Mysteres  de  Marseilles,  Le  Voeu  d'une  morte,  Contes  a  Ninon, 
1864;  Confession  de  Claude,  1865;  The'rese  Raqnin,  1867;  Madeleine 
Fe'rat,  1868;  Les  Rougon-Macquart  (20  vols.),  1871-1893;  Les  Trois 
villes,  Lourdes,  Rome,  Paris,  1894-1898;  Les  Quatres  evangiles ; 
Fe'condite',  1899 ;  Travail,  1901 ;  Verite,  1902 ;  Justice  unfinished. 
Critical  essays:  Le  Roman  experimental,  1880;  Les  Romanciers  nat- 
uralistes,  1881  ;  Nos  auteurs  dramatiques,  1881;  Documents  litte'raires, 
1881;  Une  Campagne,  1881;  Correspondance :  3  vols.,  1907-1908. 

Criticism:  Brunetiere,  Roman  naturaliste,  pp.  131,297,  345;  Pou- 
mic,  Portraits  d'ecrivains ;  Laroumet,  Nouvelles  etudes  de  litterature 
et  d'art;  Pellissier,  Litterature  contemporaine,  pp.  56,  199,  and  Mouve- 
ment  litteraire,  p.  343  ;  Lemaitre,  Contemporains,  i.  249,  iv.  263 ; 
Sherard,  jfcmile  Zola,  a  biographical  and  critical  study. 


MODERN  FICTION. — THE  NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.     447 

"  Madeleine  Ferat,"  is  quite  inferior  to  this ;  but  it 
marks  the  beginning  of  that  interest  in  the  mysterious 
problems  of  heredity  by  which  he  nursed  and  fortified 
the  fatalistic  determinism  of  the  "  Rougon-Macquart," 
—  the  most  monumental  achievement  of  French  fiction 
since  Balzac. 

This  was  followed  by  "  The  Three  Cities,"  in  which 
he  traced  the  course  of  a  young  priest  from  Lourdes  to 
Rome  and  Paris,  from  Catholicism  to  socialism  and  free 
thought.  The  last  of  this  series  was  published  in  1898, 
the  year  in  which  Zola  threw  himself  into  the  lists  in 
defense  of  Dreyfus  and  the  republic  against  the  schemes 
of  a  military  cabal.  Tried  for  calumniating  a  court- 
martial,  he  was  convicted,  appealed,  and  being  again 
convicted,  took  refuge  in  England,  whence  time  having 
justified  him,  he  returned  in  honor  in  1899,  publishing 
in  that  year  the  first  of  four  projected  novels  in  which 
he,  always  a  moralist,  proposed  to  preach  the  four  great 
social  virtues:  Fecundity,  Work,  Truth,  and  Justice. 
But  three  of  these  volumes  had  been  finished  when  he 
died  by  accidental  asphyxiation  in  1902.  His  body  was 
transferred  to  the  Panthe'on  in  1908  and  a  public  monu- 
ment erected  to  him  in  Paris  in  1909. 

The  strength  of  all  Zola's  fiction,  at  least  from  the 

I  time  he  found  himself  in  "  L'Assommoir,"  lies  in  his 

/  skill   in   handling   crowds   and   massing   effects.     His 

genius    is    architectonic,    imposing    by    accumulation 

rather    than    impressing    by   artistic    arrangement    or 

selection. 

Modern  literary  art,  he  thought,  "  should  be  wholly 
experimental  and  materialistic,"  that  is,  scientific  and 
realistic.  He  said,  as  early  as  1868,  that  his  purpose 
in  the  "Rougon-Macquart,"  that  "natural  and  social 
history  of  a  family  under  the  Second  Empire,"  was 


448  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

"  to  study  the  problems  of  blood  and  environment,  the 
secret  workings  that  give  to  the  children  of  one  father 
different  passions  and  temperaments,  ...  to  paint  a 
whole  social  era  by  a  thousand  details  of  men  and 
manners,  ...  to  study  humanity  itself  in  its  most 
intimate  workings,  .  .  .  and  to  show  how  ten  or  twenty 
beings  -who  at  first  sight  seem  strangers  appear  by 
scientific  analysis  to  be  closely  attached  to  one  an- 
other." Heredity,  he  thought,  "  had  its  laws,  like 
gravity." 

This  theory  of  fiction,  amalgamated  from  Taine  and 
Flaubert,  is  proclaimed  with  more  vigor  in  Zola's  criti- 
cal essays  than  it  is  applied  in  his  novels.  Its  weak 
points  have  been  repeatedly  and  unsparingly  laid  bare; 
and  this  has  tended  to  divert  critical  appreciation  from 
the  merits  of  his  writing,  which  indeed  lie  quite  else- 
where. It  may  be  possible  to  import  science  into  the 
novel,  to  make  it  reflect  the  last  light  of  physio- 
psychology,  as  seen  under  the  microscope  of  the  deter- 
minist;  but  Zola  certainly  has  not  done  it,  and  the 
more  we  examine  these  "  scientific  experiments  carried 
on  in  the  free  flight  of  imagination,"  which  is  his  own 
description  of  "  Le  Reve,"  the  more  clearly  we  see  that 
their  power  and  fascination  lie  in  what  his  theory 
would  exclude,  in  the  epic  and  Romantic  imagination 
of  a  morose  and  gloomy  but  grand  and  masterful  painter 
of  the  animal  instincts  in  human  nature,  which  seem 
to  possess  and  torment  his  spirit  like  a  nightmare, 
dragging  him  through  foulest  slums  of  vice  and  dens 
of  crime,  forcing  him  to  fix  his  eyes  upon  the  bete 
humaine,  till  his  fancy  differentiates  it  into  grandiose, 
hyperbolical  types  of  blind,  materialistic  forces  work- 
ing out  the  inevitable  sum  of  human  folly  and  misery. 

It  is  thus  that  we  are  to  understand  and  perhaps  in 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      449 

some  measure  to  excuse  the  sordidness,  the  nastiness, 
the  blasphemy,  and  the  obscenity  of  some  melancholy 
pages  in  the  "  Kougon-Macquart,"  whose  nearest  paral- 
lels in  earlier  French  literature  had  been  the  wholly 
condemnable  "  Contemporains  du  cornmun "  of  Eestif 
de  la  Bretonne.  He  is  bent  on  showing  what  society, 
especially  the  society  of  the  Second  Empire,  has  made 
of  its  middle,  lower,  and  lowest  classes.  That  we  may 
comprehend  their  moral  decay,  he  will  not  veil  even  the 
crassest  expression  of  it ;  and  while  it  may  be  justly 
urged  from  the  aesthetic  side  that  he  has  marred  the 
effect  by  overloading  the  color,  —  that,  as  the  French 
proverb  says,  "  he  has  fallen  on  the  side  to  which  he 
inclined,"  —  yet  he  may  rightly  claim  that  he  has  served 
an  ethical  purpose,  not  alone  by  making  vice  most 
repellent,  but  by  flashing  on  our  moral  sense  vivid  reve- 
lations of  the  mental,  emotional,  and  aesthetic  gulf  that 
separates  the  summit  from  the  base  of  the  social  pyra- 
mid, the  light-house  of  culture  from  the  dark  sea  that 
laps  its  base  and  may  some  day  drown  its  beams  in  the 
tempest  of  social  revolution. 

But,  one  may  fairly  ask,  has  the  social  life  depicted 
in  "  Nana,"  or  in  "  L'Assommoir,"  in  "  La  Bete  hu- 
maine,"  or  in  "  La  Terre,"  any  corresponding  reality  ? 
Is  it  naturalistic  ?  Surely  these  stories  do  not  typify 
normal  average  conditions.  They  have  about  the  same 
relation  to  reality  that  an  anatomical  museum  has  to 
the  sculptures  of  the  Louvre.  But  both  have  their  place. 
Fiction  will  perhaps  be  a  greater  social  power  by  show- 
ing us,  not  where  society  stands,  but  whither  it  tends ; 
and  that  purpose  is  served  by  the  stories  of  »Nana,  of 
Etienne,  of  Gervaise,  and  of  Jean.  It  is  here,  and  not 
in  the  success  or  failure  of  Zola's  "scientific  experi- 
ments," that  we  must  seek  for  such  ethical  value  as 

29 


450  MODEllN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

the   "  Kougon-Macquart "   possess,  apart  from  artistic 
qualities  of  a  nature  much  more  rare. 

By  the  device  of  a  legitimate  and  illegitimate  branch, 
the  descendants  of  the  mentally  unsound  Adelaide 
Fouque  are  spread  through  all  the  strata  of  the  Second 
Empire,  where,  in  the  race  of  the  Eougons,  the  demo- 
cratic upheaval  feeds  the  political  ambition  of  one,  the 
speculative  mania  of  another,  the  scientific  aspirations 
of  a  third,  the  restless  commercial  enterprise  of  a 
fourth ;  and  the  predisposition  to  insanity  manifests  it- 
self now  in  a  morbidly  impressionable  clerical  celibate, 
now  in  an  incarnation  of  mysticism  that  evaporates 
at  the  touch  of  earthly  love,  and  now  in  a  cataleptic 
victim  of  jealousy.  Meantime  the  story  of  the  chil- 
dren of  Macquart  has  taken  the  reader  into  the  crypts, 
and  even  sometimes  into  the  vaults,  of  the  social  edifice. 
Drunkenness  labors  with  insanity  for  the  destruction 
of  Gervaise,  who  bequeaths  these  tendencies,  trans- 
formed now  into  a  painter's  sterile  but  ever  travailing 
genius,  now  into  the  murderous  mania  of  a  locomotive 
engineer,  now  into  the  passionate  revolt  of  a  socialistic 
miner,  or  again  into  the  poison-flower  of  vice  avenging 
itself  on  the  society  that  fostered  it,  —  Nana,  the  gilded 
fly  from  the  social  dunghill,  bearing  on  its  wings  the 
ferment  of  destruction,  a  contagion  in  the  pest-stricken 
air  of  the  Second  Empire.  Other  Macquarts  reveal  the 
gross  materialism  of  the  multitude,  whose  god  is  their 
belly,  or  the  sordid  monotony  of  the  lives  of  farmer 
and  fisherman,  relieved  only  by  fits  of  gloomy  bestiality, 
till  finally  chance  so  balances  these  elements  of  evil  as 
to  produce  Jean,  the  prudent,  hopeful,  toiling  peasant, 
to  whom  and  to  his  like  Zola  commits  the  task  of 
restoring  France,  poisoned  by  the  Empire,  crushed  by 
foreign  conquest  and  fratricidal  war. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      451 

In  his  studies  of  speculation,  ambition,  and  bour- 
geois life  Zola  sees  everywhere  pretence,  hypocrisy, 
morality  for  external  use  only,  glitter  without,  sordid- 
ness  within.  All  his  characters  seem,  as  he  makes  one 
of  them  say  of  the  children  in  " Pot-bouille,"  "sick 
or  ill-bred."  Their  principles  are  weak,  their  desires 
imperative,  their  will  vacillating.  They  reflect  the 
confidence  of  the  time  that  science  had  established 
materialism ;  and  as  a  result  of  this  they  show  a  devel- 
opment of  hedonistic  fatalism  and  a  weakening  of  those 
inhibitive  functions  by  which  alone  the  happiness  of 
self-control  is  won.  It  may  be  worth  noting  here 
before  we  pass  to  the  lower  circles  that  Zola  could  have 
known  nothing  by  observation  of  the  carnival  of  lux- 
ury, the  wild  whirl  of  speculation,  the  Napoleonic  eagle 
turned  vulture,  that  he  describes,  for  instance,  in  "  La 
Cure'e."  These  chapters  are,  however,  admirable  in- 
stances of  the  power  of  trained  realistic  imagination, 
sharpened  by  the  privations  of  his  own  youth  and  fed 
on  the  opera-glass  notes  of  his  friends  and  patrons, 
the  Goncourts  and  Flaubert.1 

The  nine  novels  that  deal  with  the  laboring  class  offer 
a  more  congenial  field  to  Zola's  grand  but  gloomy 
talent ;  and  it  is  this  truly  "  apocalyptic  epic "  that 
found  the  first  and  greatest  recognition,  both  from 
critics  and  from  the  public,  though  it  may  well  be 
that  the  qualities  for  which  the  former  read,  are  not 
always  those  that  the  latter  admire.2  Even  a  super- 

1  There  are  eleven  novels  in  the  hourgeois  group  with  an  average 
circulation  of  64,000.  Of  these  the  most  popular  is  "Le  Reve,"  the 
most  crass,  "Pot-bouille,"  the  most  artistic,  "La  Faute  de  1'abbe 
Mouret." 

2  Of  these  the  average  circulation  has  been  102,000.  Criticism 
would  doubtless  give  the  first  place  to  "  Germinal,"  the  second  to 
"  L  'Assommoir."  The  public  has  preferred  "  Nana  "  and  "  La  De- 


452  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

ficial  examination  suffices  to  show  that  this  "  experi- 
mental scientist "  in  fiction  works  more  by  logic  than 
by  observation,  more  by  deduction  than  analysis.  As 
he  says  himself,  he  describes  temperaments  rather  than 
characters,  types  rather  than  individuals,  masses  rather 
than  men.  And  he  looks  at  these  masses,  types,  and 
temperaments  as  a  determinist,  if  not  as  a  fatalist,  to 
whom  things  seem  to  have  almost  as  much  personality 
as  the  lete  humaine  itself.  It  is  curious  to  watch  this 
tendency  as  it  develops  in  "  L'Assommoir,"  "  Germinal," 
and  "  La  Debacle."  Already,  in  the  first  of  these,  the 
dram-shop,  society's  device  for  the  production  of  sin 
and^crime,  with  its  panting  distillery  on  exhibition, 
breathes  as  true  and  individual  a  life  as  the  wretched 
washerwoman  who  gropes  her  way  in  misery  and  sor- 
didness,  and  wrecks  herself  on  brutality  and  vice. 
For  the  narrow  horizon  of  such  animal  existence  inevi- 
tably involves  its  own  disappointment.  The  material- 
ism of  these  well-fed  city  artisans  kills  in  their  hearts 
all  moral  purpose,  all  the  higher  interests  of  life.  Not 
only  is  there  no  religion;  there  is  no  loyalty,  no 
decency,  no  self-restraint,  and  so  there  can  be  no  suc- 
cessful resistance  to  petty  vices,  but  rather  a  moral 
stagnation  that  finds  its  only  sure  consolation  in  feast- 
ing and  drunkenness.  From  being .  of  the  earth, 
earthy,  it  grows  of  the  dirt,  dirty,  till  the  pseudo- 
respectable  friends  of  the  besotted  Gervaise  are  ready 
to  pay  her  in  drink  for  mimicking  her  husband's  de- 
lirium tremens,  and  to  laugh  at  the  exhibition,  till 
she  dies  in  a  forgotten  closet,  to  be  discovered  only  by 
her  corpse's  putrefaction ;  while  the  snaky  coils  of  the 

bacle,"  and  buys  more  copies  of  "  La  Terre  "  than  of  "  Germinal," 
though  that  novel  is  certainly  the  worst  artistically,  and  the  least 
naturalistic,  of  the  whole  series. 


MODERN  FICTION.  —  THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      453 

distillery  continue  to  ooze  their  alcoholic  sweat  like  a 
slow,  persistent  spring. 

This  is  no  photographic  realism.  It  is  Romanticism 
a  rebours.  Even  the  environment  is  treated  romanti- 
cally,1 and  the  characters  are  not  shown  in  their  inner 
workings,  as  with  Stendhal  or  Bourget,  but  in  their 
external  manifestations.  They  appear  and  reappear, 
changed  we  know  not  how  or  why,  just  as  we  might 
meet  them  from  day  to  day  in  some  city  street.  'And 
we  shall  find  all  these  elements  accentuated,  magnified, 
in  "  Germinal,"  —  that  grandiose  epic  of  the  strike  and 
the  mine.  In  place  of  the  oozing  still  we  have  here 
the  pumping-engine,  dominating  all  with  a  soulless, 
relentless,  panting  life,  vague  yet  real,  and  swallowed 
in  the  collapsing  pit  at  last,  like  a  monster  struggling 
with  destruction,  while  another  force,  mysterious, 
unseen,  is  the  corporation,  soulless,  relentless,  compel- 
ling these  miners  to  their  daily  tasks,  and  itself  as 
joyless  as  they.  Among  these  colliers  the  individual 
is  lost  in  the  type  even  more  than  with  the  artisans  of 
"  L'Assommoir."  They  force  themselves  on  the  mind 
with  a  vivid,  nightmare  life,  until  their  very  filthiness 
and  squalor  becomes  real  and  natural ;  until  we  feel  as 
though  in  some  far-off  existence  we  ourselves  had 
shared  it,  had  been  goaded  to  revolt  like  the  sober 
Maheu,  or  felt,  with  Maheude,  the  bitter  irony  of  a 
domestic  life  that  sends  mother  and  child  to  the  coal-pit 
to  keep  them  from  starvation ;  until  we  feel  that  we 
might  be  even  now  as  they  are,  were  we  condemned 
like  them,  from  birth,  to  this  cramped  blackness  and 
joyless  monotony,  on  whose  horizon  there  dawns  no 

1  Witness  that  astonishing  tenement  stairway  (L'Assommoir,  pp.  64- 
75)  leading  to  the  attic  workshop,  where  Lorilleux  has  hammered  his 
eight  thousand  metres  of  gold  chain. 


454  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

ray  of  hope,  for  even  they  see  that  fierce,  visionary 
socialism  would  but  increase  unsatisfied  desires.  The 
whole  sad  epic  breathes  "  the  uselessness  of  everything, 
the  eternal  dolor  of  existence."  Only  at  the  very  close 
does  Zola  seem  to  seek  a  desperate  consolation  in  the 
"germinal"  forces  of  nature. 

Artistically  the  great  power  of  "  Germinal "  lies  in 
the  handling  of  masses  of  men,  the  procession  of  strik- 
ing miners,  or  the  mob  howling  for  bread  and  stilled 
with  bullets ;  and  similar  passages  make  "  La  Debacle  " 
one  of  the  greatest  war  stories  of  all  literature.  Here 
are  superb  pictures  of  armies  concentrating  with  me- 
chanical precision  around  the  fatal  Sedan,  of  regiments 
on  the  march,  or  herded  in  cattle-cars  or  prison-pens, 
or  surging  to  and  fro  through  flaming  Paris,  or  in  the 
blood-stained  streets  of  Bazeilles,  or  lying  in  furrows 
under  fire  on  the  plateau  of  Alge'rie,  or  dashing  to 
destruction  from  the  Calvary  of  Illy  with  the  gallant 
chasseurs  of  Margueritte.  Here,  too,  is  Napoleon, 
whose  luxurious  camp  train  and  guards  reappearing  at 
rhythmic  intervals,  take  the  place  of  the  mining- 
engine  and  the  still ;  and  every  one  of  the  later  novels 
has  a  similar  object  that  serves  as  the  burden  of  his 
epic  narrative,  brooding  over  all,  and  inspiring  it  with 
a  weird  life,  such  as  Hugo  drew  from  Notre-Dame  and 
from  the  sea.  In  "  Docteur  Pascal  "  it  is  the  cupboard 
with  its  mass  of  family  documents ;  in  "  L' Argent  "  it 
is  the  Stock-Exchange ;  in  "  La  Terre  "  the  fecund  fields 
of  La  Beauce  ;  in  "  Au  bonheur  des  dames  "  the  great 
shop ;  in  "  Une  Page  d'amour "  the  vision  of  Paris  in 
sunshine  and  storm,  at  dawn,  at  noon,  at  eve  and  mid- 
night ;  and  in  "  La  Faute  de  l'abb£  Mouret "  it  is  the 
wild,  luxuriant  Paradou,  heavy  with  swelling  life. 

This  method  of  composition  is  essentially  epic  and 


MODERN  FICTION.  —  THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      455 

idealistic ;  and  if  Zola's  style  be  examined,  it  will  be 
found  that  in  spite  of  all  that  he  has  written  of 
"  human  documents,"  in  spite  of  his  detailed  descrip- 
tions, he  is  a  less  minute  realist  than  Balzac  or  even 
than  Daudet.  On  the  other  hand,  he  is  more  florid, 
more  picturesque  ;  he  revels  in  adjectives,  and  shows  in 
similes  and  metaphors  a  strange,  poetic  vision  and  an 
essentially  Komantic  fancy.  A  single  example  may 
illustrate  this.  The  pumping-engine  of  "  Germinal "  is 
about  to  sink  into  the  flooded  and  collapsing  mine. 
"  You  saw  the  machine,"  says  Zola,  "  dislocated  on  its 
base,  its  limbs  extended,  fighting  with  death.  It 
moved  still,  stretched  its  connecting-rod,  its  giant 
knee,  as  though  to  rise,  then  it  expired,  crushed,  en- 
gulfed. Only  the  chimney,  thirty  metres  high,  re- 
mained erect,  shaken  like  a  mast  in  a  hurricane.  It 
seemed  as  though  it  must  crumble  and  fly  into  powder, 
when  all  at  once  it  sank  in  a  mass,  was  drunk  up  by 
the  earth,  melted  away  like  some  colossal  taper ;  and 
nothing  appeared,  not  even  the  lightning-rod  tip.  It 
was  ended.  That  wicked  beast,  crouched  in  that 
hollow,  gorged  with  human  flesh,  heaved  no  more  its 
long  and  heavy  breath.  Utterly  the  Voreux  had  sunk 
to  the  abyss."  This  is  not  precisely  an  experimental 
"  slice  of  crude  life."  It  is  something  much  better  and 
higher.  For  Zola's  poetic  instinct  constantly  corrects 
the  vice  of  his  theory,  which  it  seems  he  had  himself 
ceased  to  hold  in  its  extreme  form.  For  when  his 
rouged  and  painted  emperor,  on  the  eve  of  Sedan,  was 
called  in  question,  he  answered  by  claiming  "  the  lib- 
erty of  a  poet  to  take  what  version  suited  him ; "  and 
we  grant  the  liberty  gladly,  but  he  should  have  remem- 
bered that  it  was  the  liberty  of  Eomantic  idealism. 
Zola  says  that  he  conceives  the  art  of  writing  to  be 


456  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

"  to  have  a  vivid  impression,  and  to  render  it  with  the 
greatest  possible  intensity."  This  vivid  intensity  he 
seeks  to  attain  by  exaggeration  of  the  salient  features 
in  landscape,  action,  or  character;  and  he  does  this 
often  at  the  expense  of  good  taste  and  moral  conven- 
tions, and  still  oftener  at  the  expense  of  the  "  human 
document."  When  dealing  with  scenes  of  low  life, 
he  is  apt  to  deepen  the  impression  by  using  himself 
the  language  of  the  class  of  whom  he  speaks.  Thus 
"  L'Assommoir  "  comprises  in  its  descriptive  passages  a 
fairly  complete  repertory  of  artisan  slang,  and  in  the 
conversations  he  shrinks  from  no  vulgarity  that  may 
minister  to  a  phonographic  realism,  which  is  not  neces- 
sarily a  true  one,  since  the  same  words  convey  quite 
different  impressions  to  different  social  classes.  This 
is,  however,  by  no  means  its  only  fault,  for  if  we  go 
behind  the  outward  form  to  the  inner  content  of  the 
speeches,  it  often  seems  as  though  a  dread  of  embellish- 
ment had  led  him  to  its  opposite.  "  Strange  world," 
says  Lemaitre  of  "  Pot-bouille,"  "  where  the  porters 
speak  like  poets  and  the  others  like  porters."  1  It  is 
indeed  a  strange  world,  for  it  is  the  world  of  that  living 
antinomy,  a  morose  Eomanticist. 

The  language  in  which  he  describes  this  world  en 
gris  is  copious,  flowing,  often  in  the  later  novels  re- 
dundant, growing  more  and  more  architectural,  depend- 
ing for  effect  more  on  masses  than  on  details,  with 
neither  the  polish  of  Flaubert,  nor  the  mannered  affec- 
tation of  the  Goncourts,  inaccurate  in  the  use  of  words, 
and  falling  sometimes  into  undeniable  solecisms.  He 
writes,  as  Pellissier  says,  "  not  only  without  tact,  but 
without  precision.  And  yet,  in  spite  of  all,  this  gross, 

1  Op.  cit.  i.  261.  Cp.  on  Zola's  conversations  Brunetiere,  op.  cit. 
p.  305. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      457 

heavy,  ponderous  style  makes  in  the  end  an  impression 
of  monotonous  power  and  brutal  grandeur  in  intimate 
harmony  with  that  reign  of  inexplicable  blind  fatality, 
that  overhangs  "  this  grandiose  evocation  of  topsy-turvy 
idealism. 

The  most  complete  illustration  of  Zola's  theory 
of  fiction  is  not  found  in  his  own  works,  but  in  those 
of  the  five  young  writers  who  co-operated  with  him  in 
"  Les  Soire'es  de  Me'dan."  Three  of  these  indeed  call 
for  no  notice  here.1  But  of  Huysmans  2  it  is  well  to 
speak  briefly,  and  Maupassant's  genius  makes  a  worthy 
close  to  this  epoch  in  the  evolution  of  fiction.  The 
former  of  these  had  a  powerful  but  extremely  erratic 
talent,  that  he  first  devoted  to  rather  nauseating  stud- 
ies of  collage,  treating  subjects  from  Parisian  Bohemia 
in  the  style  of  "  L'Assommoir,"  but  afterward  uniting 
this  crass  Naturalism  with  something  of  the  morose 
satanism  of  Baudelaire,  and  finding  his  art  the  more 
lovable  the  more  its  subject  invited  repulsion  and  con- 
tempt. But  he  seemed  to  take  such  a  malicious  pleas- 
ure in  eliminating  all  grace  of  form  or  correctness  of 
language  from  his  pictures  of  ugliness,  that  morbid 
curiosity  soon  turned  to  nausea  at  the  wearisome 
chaplet  of  vile  images  in  which  one  sought  in  vain  for 
any  purpose,  aesthetic  or  moral.  Nature  is  full  of  de- 
cay ;  but  books  that  seem  to  borrow  their  unhealthy  glow 

1  Ceard  and  Hennique  have  since  become  more  eclectic  in  their 
methods.     Alexis  has  sunk  his  talent  in  uncleanness. 

2  Huysmans  (b.  1846)  is  a  Fleming.      In  the  "Soirees  de  Me'dan," 
his  "  Sac  au  dos  "  surpasses  all  that  collection  in  crass  realism.     The 
novels  alluded  to  below  are,  "  Les  Soeurs  Vatard,"   "  Marthe,"  and 
"  En  me'uage."    Baudelairism  appears  in  "  A  rebours  "  and  "La-bas ;  " 
the  reaction  in  "  En  route,"  "  La  Cathe'drale,"  1 898,  and  "L'Oblat,"  1903. 

Criticism  of  Huysmans  in  Lemaitre,  Contemporains,  i.  311  ;  Brune- 
tiere,  Romanciers  naturalistes,  pp.  321  sqq. ;  Huneker,  Egoists  pp 
167-206. 


458  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

from  the  phosphorescence  of  a  decomposing  brain  are 
neither  artistic  nor  natural.  Even  Huysmans  wearied 
of  himself,  and  in  his  later  novels  joined  those  pessi- 
mists who  "  have  grown  tired  of  the  Devil  and  are  try- 
ing a  reconciliation  with  God."  "  En  Eoute  "  is  a  study 
of  monastic  dilettantism,  which  leads  his  hero  to  the 
weary  conclusion  that  he  is  "  too  much  a  man  of 
letters  to  be  a  monk,  and  has  already  too  much  of  the 
monk  to  live  with  men  of  letters."  "  La  Cathe*drale  "  and 
"L'Oblat"  present,  however,  with  great  skill  the  beauty 
of  ecclesiastical  symbolism  in  architecture  and  in  ritual. 
Guy  de  Maupassant,1  a  nephew  of  Flaubert,  passed 
his  youth  at  Kouen,  where  he  became  a  close  student 
both  of  Normandy  and  of  the  literary  methods  of  his 
uncle,  from  whom  he  learned  the  concise  and  pregnant 
style  that  differentiated  him  at  his  first  essay  from  the 
Goncourts  and  from  Zola,  and  made  him  in  so  far  a 
truer  Naturalist  than  either,  as  he  was  also  a  pro- 
founder  and  somewhat  more  sympathetic  psychologist. 
His  "  Boule  de  suif  "  led  all  its  fellows  of  the  "  Soirees 
de  Me'dan  "  in  originality  and  compact  diction,  and  it 
struck  the  keynote  of  all  his  later  fiction.  The  scene  is 
Normandy,  a  region  whose  inhabitants  have  and  perhaps 

1  Born  1850";  died  1893.  Poetry:  Des  vers,  1880.  Fiction:  Boule 
de  suif  (in  Les  Soirees  de  Me'dan,  1880);  Une  Vie,  1883;  Bel-ami, 
1885;  Mont-Oriol,  1887 ;  Pierre  et  Jean,  1888;  Forte  cotnme  la  mort, 
1889;  Notre  cceur,  1890;  and  the  posthumously  published  L'ame 
e'trangere  and  L'Angelus.  Sixteen  volumes  of  short  stories,  of  which 
the  chief  are:  La  Maison  Tellier,  1881 :  Mile.  Fifi,  1882;  M.  Parent, 
1886;  La  Horla,  1887.  Drama:  Musotte,  1891.  Notes  of  travel: 
Clair  de  lune,  1883  ;  Au  soleil,  1884  ;  Sur  1'eau,  1888. 

Critical  essays :  Doumic,  Ecrivains  d'aujourd'hui,  Brunetiere,  Ro- 
manciers  naturalistes,  p.  397  (with  which  it  is  curious  to  compare  the 
views  expressed  in  the  same  book,  pp.  327,  334,  342) ;  Lemaitre,  Con- 
temporains,  i.  285,  v.  1.  The  origins  of  several  of  Maupassant's  most 
noted  tales  are  discussed  in  "  Revue  bleue  "  (July,  1893)  and  "  Journal 
des  de'bats"  (August  10,  1893). 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      459 

deserve  a  repute  of  hard,  thrifty  selfishness,  from  which 
Maupassant  has  distilled  a  type  of  egoistic,  cynical 
pessimism  that  runs  through  his  early  work,  deepening 
gradually  into  nihilism  and  sinking  at  last  to  insanity. 
Thus  Maupassant  offers  a  melancholy  but  fascinat- 
ing study  in  literary  psychology.  We  first  hear  of  him 
as  "in  extremely  good  health,  ruddy,  and  with  the 
look  of  a  robust  country  bourgeois."  The  friends  of 
those  years  speak  of  him  sometimes  as  a  playful  satyr, 
sometimes  as  a  lusty  human  bull.  Yet  one  can  see 
that  even  then  there  was  a  worm  at  the  root  of  the. 
tree,  which  his  aristocratic  assumption  of  superiority 
to  his  literary  fellows  cloaked  but  did  not  hide.  He 
said  himself  that  "literature  had  never  been  to  him 
anything  but  a  means  of  emancipation,"  that  he  "  never 
found  any  joy  in  working;"  indeed,  it  might  seem  that 
his  writing  contributed  to  hasten  his  disease,  and  we 
can  see  in  it  how  his  heart  loses  year  by  year  the  sen- 
suous exuberance  of  his  youth.  This  lover  of  the 
senses  and  all  that  they  brought  him  dwelt  as  persis- 
tently as  G-autier  and  Baudelaire  on  the  very  mystery 
of  death  that  he  denied,  until  toward  the  last1  it  seemed 
as  though  he  were  at  times  hypnotized  by  its  ghastly 
fascination.  Body  and  mind  suffered  under  the  night- 
mare. He  travelled  in  search  of  health,  still  more  in 
search  of  distraction.  But  his  gloom  followed  him 
even  to  the  sun-lit  Mediterranean.  His  notes  of  travel 
are  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of  a  pessimism 
radically  different  from  the  sterile  contempt  of  Flaubert, 
or  Zola's  morose  determination  to  erect  a  Babel  monu- 
ment to  human  vice  and  misery.  Maupassant's  pessi- 
mistic pain  is  mortal  earnest.  He  will  live  as  he 

1  E.  g.,  in  La  Horla.    Cp.  Claretie,  in  North   American  Review, 
August,  1892. 


460  MODERN   FKENCH  LITERATURE. 

believes,  as  though  life  were  a  succession  of  fatalities 
caused  by  imperative  desires,  and  ending  for  good  with 
death.1  Now,  this  philosophy  of  life  offers  no  check  to 
sensuality  save  satiety,  but  to  a  man  of  strong  mind 
that  check  is  swift  and  bitterly  efficient.  Those  orgies 
that  far  into  the  night  once  roused  his  neighbors  in 
their  country  villas  at  fitretat  gave  way  to  morbid 
speculation  on  the  essential  misery  of  man,  and  to 
scientific  investigations  with  which  he  deliberately 
nursed  the  pessimism  that  was  corroding  his  brain. 
So  the  robust  animalism  of  "  Une  Vie  "  and  of  "  Bel- 
ami"  changed  to  the  melancholy  moral  anatomy  of 
"  Fort  comme  la  mort  "  and  "  Notre  coeur."  Already 
in  1887  the  weird  fancies  of  "  La  Horla"  were  a  symp- 
tom of  the  end.  "  That  way  madness  lies."  Maupas- 
sant had  reasoned  himself  into  a  moral  pitfall  from 
which  he  saw  no  issue.  But  he  had  approached  it  in 
his  earlier  tales  with  such  calm,  such  clear  vision,  that 
were  it  not  for  his  life's  tragedy,  one  might  be  tempted 
to  regard  his  work  as  the  ironic,  satiric,  and  cynical 
reduction  to  the  absurd  of  literary  pessimism. 

To  analyze  the  novels  of  Maupassant  is  unnecessary 
to  our  purpose,  but  it  is  worth  while  to  note  how  they 
mark  the  stages  of  his  mental  devolution.  The  first  two 
are  narratives  of  lives ;  "  Mont-Oriol "  marks  a  transi- 
tion ;  and  the  novels  that  follow  are  dramas  of  situation, 
of  morbid  emotion,  all  of  them  dominated  by  a  horror 
of  old  age  that  grows  each  year  more  penetrating  and 
all-pervading.  Artistically,  the  best  work  is  probably 
in  "  Pierre  et  Jean,"  a  study  of  fraternal  jealousy.  As 
pictures  of  the  morals  of  pessimism,  "  Une  Vie "  and 
"  Bel-ami,"  though  the  author  disclaims  any  moral  pur- 

1  This  is  essentially  the  creed  of  "  Sur  1'eau,"  written  when  the 
author  was  thirty-eight. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      461 

pose,  will  not  fail  of  a  moral  result  that  has  in  it  the 
possibility  of  good  ;  but  "  Fort  comme  la  mort,"  a  tale 
of  incestuous  love,  is  hardly  profitable,  and  "  Notre 
coeur  "  is  not  profitable  at  all. 

It  is  difficult  to  convey  an  idea  of  Maupassant's  style, 
though  it  is  easy  to  cite  characteristic  passages,  nor 
need  they  be  long  ones.  His  descriptions  are  always 
packed  into  the  smallest  space.  He  studies  compression 
as  Balzac  and  Zola  do  completeness.  He  is  as  easy  as 
Flaubert  is  labored,  as  graceful  as  the  Goncourts  are 
artificial.  But  his  apparent  limpidity  often  masks  a 
meaning  that  is  not  at  once  perceived.  Here  is  an 
approach  to  Paris  at  evening:  — 

"The  carriage  passed  the  fortifications.  Duroy  saw 
before  him  a  ruddy  brightness  in  the  sky,  like  the  glow  of 
a  gigantic  forge.  He  heard  a  confused,  vast,  unbroken 
murmur,  made  up  of  innumerable  and  different  noises,  a 
dull  panting,  now  near,  now  distant,  a  vast,  vague  palpita- 
tion of  life,  the  breath  of  Paris  gasping  in  the  spring  night 
like  a  colossus  worn  out  with  fatigue."  (Bel-ami,  p.  273.) 

In  this  there  is  something  of  Zola's  force  with  the 
added  strength  of  condensation.  But  Maupassant  has 
also  at  his  command  a  lightness  of  touch  reached  by 
none  of  the  Naturalists  and  hardly  attained  even  by 
Daudet.  Listen,  for  instance,  to  this  organ  study : 

"  Sometimes  the  pipes  cast  out  prolonged  vast  clamors, 
swelling  like  waves,  so  sonorous  and  so  mighty  that  it 
seemed  as  though  they  would  lift  and  burst  the  roof  to 
spread  themselves  in  the  blue  sky.  Their  vibrations  filled 
all  the  church,  and  made  flesh  and  blood  tremble.  Then 
all  at  once  they  grew  calm.  Delicious  notes  fluttered  alert 
in  the  air,  and  touched  the  ear  like  light  breaths.  There 
were  little  melodies,  graceful,  pretty,  tripping,  that  flitted 


462  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

like  birds.  And  suddenly  the  coquettish  music  swelled 
anew,  became  terrible  in  its  strength  and  amplitude,  as 
though  a  grain  of  sand  had  become  a  world."  (Bel-ami, 
p.  439.) 

Often  a  single  phrase  or  word  of  Maupassant  will  print 
itself  on  the  mind  with  startling  vividness.  Of  all  the 
sombre  disciples  of  Taine  he  is  beyond  question  the 
greatest  master  of  language,  the  most  finished  stylist. 

In  the  short  story  Maupassant's  compact  style  has 
made  him  an  unchallenged  master.  The  artistic  self- 
restraint  of  "  Une  Fille  de  ferine,"  "  Monsieur  Parent," 
"  Hautot  pere  et  fils,"  or  "  Le  Bapteme,"  is  as  art  wholly 
admirable.  There  was  in  that  generation  a  noteworthy 
revival  of  this  genre  so  much  cultivated  in  the  eight- 
eenth century.  Here  we  shall  see  Daudet  win  his 
first  success ;  here  Coppe*e,  HaleVy,  Lavedan,  and  many 
others  did  work  of  much  merit ;  but  above  them  all 
ranks  Maupassant.  JHe  published  more  than  a  hun- 
dred such  tales.  There  are  stories  of  Normandy,  chiefly 
tragic,  though  touching  at  times  a  delightfully  comic 
vein.1  There  are  tales,  perhaps  too  many,  of  Parisian 
foibles,  of  life  in  strange  lands,  of  hunting,  of  medi- 
cine, and  of  love,  crime,  horror,  misery,  over  all  of 
which  there  plays  a  delicate  psychological  analysis, 
keen  and  often  kindly.  To  all  he  brings  the  same 
careful  elaboration,  the  conscientious  effort  of  a  man 
seeking  in  work  emancipation  from  self.  It  cannot  be 
denied,  however,  that  his  aBsthetic  feeling  is  keener 
than  his  ethical  instinct.  Tales  like  "  Imprudence  "  2 
show  the  writer  at  his  best,  the  author  at  his  worst. 
Still  it  is  by  his  stories  rather  than  by  his  novels  that 

1  E.  g.,  Tribunaux  rustiques,  in  "M.  Parent,"  p.  189. 

2  M.  Parent,  p.  159. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE   NATURALISTIC   SCHOOL.      463 

Maupassant  will  hold  his  place  in  French  fiction,  though 
in  his  cynicism,  as  in  his  art  and  in  his  life,  he  too  is 
a  champion  of  Naturalism  pushed  to  that  unnatural 
excess  where  it  merges  into  perverted  Idealism. 

Several  writers  of  this  period  who  stood  apart  from 
the  Naturalistic  School  earned  a  popularity  or  a  critical 
recognition  sufficiently  enduring  to  justify  brief  men- 
tion. Henri  Murger's  "Scenes  de  la  vie  de  Boheme" 
(1851)  is  a  classic  of  decadent  romanticism.  Fromen- 
tin,  the  artist,  gave  in  "Dominique"  (1863)  a  master- 
piece of  artistic  psychic  realism.  The  "  national  novels  " 
of  Emile  Erckmann  and  Alexandre  Chatrian,  notably 
"Madame  The'rese  "  (1863)  and  "  Le  Consent  de  1813" 
(1864),  are  excellent  in  their  bourgeois  kind.  Gustave 
Droz  presented  with  gay  irony  the  sentiment  and  frivol- 
ity of  the  Second  Empire,  as  the  novels  of  Hale'vy,  not- 
ably "L'Abbe'  Constantin  "  (1882)  and  "  M.  et  Mme. 
Cardinal"  (1873)  did  that  of  the  first  decades  of  the 
Third  Kepublic.  The  resolute  optimism  and  humani- 
tarian sympathy  of  Hector  Malot  won  international 
recognition  for  his  "Sans  Famille "  (1878).  Interna- 
tional, too,  is  the  repute  of  Gaboriau  for  the  ingenuity 
of  his  stories  of  crime  and  its  detection.  Jules  Verne's 
fairy  tales  of  science  are  as  familiar  to  American  as  to 
French  readers.  Henri  Gre*ville  (Mme.  Durand)  gained 
great  though  passing  vogue  for  the  sentimental  sensa- 
tionalism of  her  Eussian  tales.  Frangois  Coppe'e,  esti- 
mable also  as  a  poet  and  naturalist  of  sentiment,  painted 
the  life  of  the  Parisian  petite  bourgeoisie  with  the  delicate 
feeling  of  "  an  aristocrat  who  loves  the  masses."  Finally 
Catulle  Mendes  suffered  greater  literary  and  poetic  gifts 
than  any  of  these  possessed  and  a  genius  akin  to  Gautier's 
to  be  frittered  away  for  lack  of  ethical  or  moral  stability. 


464  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 


CHAPTEE  XIII. 

MODERN    FICTION. — III.     THE    WANING    OF    NATURALISM. 

WHILE  the  theorists  of  the  "  experimental  novel "  were 
combating  the  idealism  of  the  beautiful  with  the 
idealism  of  the  base,  in  works  of  unquestionable  though 
sometimes  misdirected  genius,  several  writers  who  had 
been  born  in  the  early  years  of  Eomanticism  were  devel- 
oping a  saner  though  feebler  realism ;  and  close  upon 
them  followed  Daudet,  born  in  the  same  year  as  Zola, 
who  was  the  first  to  show  to  the  extreme  Naturalists 
the  more  excellent  way  of  realistic  sympathetic  Impres- 
sionism, thus  opening  the  path  for  the  devolution  of 
Naturalism  and  for  the  varied  developments  of  the  last 
thirty  years  that  we  associate  with  the  names  of  Loti, 
Bourget,  Barres,  Pre*vost,  and  Margueritte.  Daudet's 
novels,  and  especially  those  of  the  seventies,  from  "Fro- 
mont "  to  "  Numa  Eoumestan,"  are  cardinal  points  in 
the  evolution  of  the  new  fiction ;  but  before  his  posi- 
tion can  be  well  defined  it  is  necessary  to  consider 
briefly  the  secondary  elements  in  the  literary  environ- 
ment of  his  younger  years. 

The  oldest  among  the  men  who  might  have  influenced 
his  development  was  Feuillet,  whose  general  character- 
istics have  already  claimed  attention.1  As  a  novelist  he 
first  won  distinction  by  the  idealistic  and  somewhat 
sentimental  "  Eoman  d'un  jeune  homme  pauvre,"  just 
i  See  chap.  x.  p.  392. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE  WANING  OF   NATURALISM.    465 

a  year  after  Flaubert's  "  Madame  Bovary  "  had  inaugu- 
rated the  movement  from  which  his  own  later  works 
drew  much  of  their  power.  Feuillet  was  the  favorite 
novelist  of  the  brilliant  but  hollow  society  of  the  Sec- 
ond Empire.  He  poses  as  the  advocate  of  conventional 
morality  and  of  the  aristocracy  of  birth  and  feeling. 
But  under  this  thin  disguise  he  involves  his  gentlemen 
and  ladies  in  highly  romantic  complications  whose 
fundamental  immorality  is  often  far  from  doubtful. 
Yet  as  the  accredited  painter  of  the  Faubourg  St.  Ger- 
main he  contributed  in  his  way  and  in  a  narrow  sphere 
an  essential  element  to  the  development  of  realistic  fic- 
tion. No  one  has  rendered  so  well  as  he  the  high- 
strung,  neuropathic  women  of  the  upper  class,  who 
neither  understand  themselves  nor  are  wholly  compre- 
hensible to  others.  But  his  earlier  manner,  that  of  the 
"  Family  Musset,"  yielded  in  "  M.  de  Camors "  to  the 
demands  of  a  stricter  realism.  Especially  after  the  fall 
of  the  Empire  had  removed  a  powerful  motive  for 
glozing  the  vices  of  aristocratic  society,  he  came  to 
paint  its  hard  and  selfish  cynicism  as  none  of  his 
contemporaries  could  have  done,1  though  he  still  made 
himself  the  preacher  of  that  fashionable  Catholicity 
which  is  a  sort  of  shibboleth  of  the  aristocratic  Adul- 
lamites  under  the  Third  Republic.2 

A  lesser  and  somewhat  younger  romancer,  of  more 
tact  than  talent,  was  Cherbuliez,3  who  treats  his  stories 

1  Compare,  for  instance,  "M.   de  Camors,"  1867,  with  "Julia  de 
Trecoeur,"  1872,  "  Histoire  d'une  parisienne,"  1881,  and  "Amours  de 
Philippe,"  1887. 

2  Especially  in  "  La  Morte,"  1886. 

8  Born  1829,  died  1899.  Chronology  of  chief  novels:  Le  Comte 
Kostia,  1863;  Ladislas  Blowski,  1869;  Meta  Holdennis,  1873 ;  Samuel 
Brohl  et  Cie,  1877;  La  Bete,  1887;  Apres  fortune  faite,  1896;  Jac- 
quine  Vanesse,  1898.  He  wrote  also  several  volumes  of  critical  studies. 

30 


466  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

in  Voltaire's  manner  as  vehicles  for  philosophic  dia~ 
logues  to  discuss  questions  of  science  or  sociology' 
with  his  finger  on  the  public  pulse.  These  discussions 
are  often  excellent,  but  the  novels  that  contain  them  are 
almost  always  shallow  in  analysis,  and  as  commonplace 
in  sentiment  as  they  are  strained  and  involved  in  Koman- 
tic  intrigue.  Of  more  sterling  merit  but  less  popularity 
was  Ferdinand  Fabre,1  who,  like  Eenan,  was  once  a 
seminarist,  and  from  this  vantage-ground  studied  cler- 
ical life  with  such  sincere  and  careful  observation  as 
to  earn  for  himseJf  the  somewhat  too  flattering  title, 
"  the  Balzac  of  the  clergy ; "  while  his  delicate  delinea- 
tions of  peasant  character  have  hardly  been  equalled 
since  George  Sand.  But,  though  his  humor  is  more 
playful  and  his  heart  more  sympathetic,  his  talent  is 
not  of  the  measure  of  the  great  realist  who  penned 
the  pitiless  "  Cure*  de  Tours."  Here,  too,  is  a  fit  place 
to  speak  of  Andre*  Theuriet,2  who,  though  surely  riot  a 
great  writer,  perhaps  best  met  the  wishes  of  that  large 
class  who  seek  in  literature  agreeable  rest  and  distrac- 
tion rather  than  excitement  or  aesthetic  gratification. 
He  was  one  of  the  gentlest  spirits  that  survived  the 
bankruptcy  of  Romanticism,  excelling  in  descriptions  of 
country  nooks  and  corners,  of  polite  rusticity  that  knows 
nothing  of  the  delving  laborers  of  "  La  Terre,"  but  only  of 
graceful  leisure,  of  solitude  nursed  in  revery,  and  passion 
that  seems  the  healthy  springtide  of  germinating  nature. 

1  Born  1830,  died  1898.     Chronology  of  chief  novels  :  L'Abbe  Ti- 
graine,  1873;  Barnabe,  1875  ;  Mon  oncle  Benjamin,  1881  ;  Taillevent, 
1897.     Autobiography:  Ma  vocation,  1889;   Ma  jeunesse,  Mon  cas 
litteraire,  1903. 

2  Born  1833,  died  1907.    Poetry :  Le  Chemin  du  bois,  1867.    Fiction: 
Le  Mariagede  Ge'rard,  1875;  Deux  barbeaux,  1879;  Madame  Heurte- 
loup,  1882;  Tante  Aurelie,  1884;  Peche  mortel,  1885;  Amour  d'au- 
tomne,  1888  ;  L'Amoureuse  de  la  prefete,  1889  ;  Mon  oncle  Flo,  1906. 
Autobiography  :  Annees  de  printemps,  1896  ;  Jours  d'e'te,  1901. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE  WANING   OF   NATURALISM.     467 

Such  were  the  more  or  less  idealistic  contemporaries 
of  the  Naturalistic  leaders  and  the  men  who  with 
them  might  have  influenced  the  early  steps  in  fiction 
•of  Alphonse  Daudet,  who  shares  with  Zola  the  first 
place  in  modern  French  fiction,  though,  as  will 
appear  presently,  they  have  more  points  of  contrast 
than  of  resemblance  except  in  their  fundamental 
method.  His  literary  character  is  more  complex  than 
Zola's,  and  his  life  has  a  more  direct  bearing  on  his 
work. 

Alphonse  Daudet 1  was  born  at  Nimes  in  the  year 
of  Zola's  birth  at  Aix,  so  that  both  are  natives  of 
Provence,  and  joint-heirs  of  its  warm  imagination. 
Of  his  boyhood  and  early  youth  Daudet  has  given 
us  an  exquisite  sketch  in  "  Le  Petit  Chose."  His 
father  had  been  a  well-to-do  silk-manufacturer;  but 
while  Alphonse  was  still  a  child,  he  lost  his  property, 
and  went  with  his  family  to  Lyons,  where  the  boy 
read  and  wrote  much,  but  studied  little.  Poverty  pres- 
ently constrained  him,  however,  to  seek  the  wretched 
post  of  usher  (pion)  in  a  school  at  Alais,  where,  from 
his  own  account,  his  life  must  have  been  much  like 
that  of  Nicholas  Nickleby  at  Dotheboys  Hall.  After 
a  year  of  this  slavery,  he  left  Alais  in  desperation,  and 
joined  his  almost  equally  penniless  brother  Ernest  in 

1  Born  1840,  died  1897.  Important  helps  to  the  study  of  his  life 
and  work  are,  first,  his  own  "  Le  Petit  Chose,"  1868 ;  "  Souvenirs  d'un 
homme  de  lettres,"  1 888 ;  and  "Trente  ans  de  Paris,"  1880;  then 
Ernest  Daudet,  Mon  frere  et  moi,  souvenirs  d'enfance  et  de  jeunesse  ; 
Sherard,  Alphonse  Daudet,  a  Biographical  and  Critical  Study,  Doumic, 
Portraits  d'ecrivains,  p.  257;  Brunetiere,  Roman  naturaliste,  pp.  81 
and  369  ;  Lemaitre,  Contemporains,  ii.  273,  iv.  217  ;  Zola,  Romanciers 
naturalistes,  p.  255  (quite  faithfully  echoed  in  Pellissier,  Mouvement 
litteraire,  p.  350);  Lanson,  op.  cit.  pp.  1056-1057.  This  study  of 
Daudet  has  appeared  with  some  omissions  as  the  introduction  to  the 
author's  edition  of  "  Le  Nabab,"  Boston :  Ginn  &  Co. 


468  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Paris,  in  November,  1857.     Thus  far  the  autobiography 
of  "  Le  Petit  Chose."     The  rest  of  that  story,  published 
in  1868,  is  a  not  very  vigorous  poetic  fancy ;  and  in- 
deed all  of  his  work  prior  to  the  Franco-German  war- 
(1870-1871)  shows  idyllic  grace,  but  lacks  force. 

His  first  years  of  literary  life  were  those  of  an  in- 
dustrious Bohemian,  with  poetry  for  consolation  and 
newspaper  work  for  bread.  Zola,  who  first  met  him 
in  these  years,  describes  him  as  "living  on  the  out- 
skirts of  the  city  with  other  poets,  a  whole  band  of 
joyous  Bohemians.  He  had  the  delicate,  nervous 
beauty  of  an  Arab  horse,  with  flowing  hair,  silky, 
divided  beard,  large  eyes,  narrow  nose,  an  amorous 
mouth,  and  over  it  all  a  sort  of  illumination,  a  breath 
of  tender  light  that  individualized  the  whole  face,  with 
a  smile  full  at  once  of  intellect  and  of  the  joy  of  life. 
There  was  something  in  him  of  the  French  street-boy 
and  something  of  the  Oriental  woman."  Above  all, 
he  was  a  most  winning  man,  gaining  easily  patrons, 
friends,  critics,  the  world,  and  always  gracefully  as- 
suming an  independence  that  others  might  have  hesi- 
tated to  claim. 

He  had  secured  a  secretaryship  with  the  Due  de 
Morny,  President  of  the  Corps  Le'gislatif,  and  presiding 
genius  of  the  Empire,  and  had  won  recognition  for  his 
short  stories  in  "Le  Figaro,"  when  in  1859  failing 
health  compelled  him  to  go  to  Algeria,  which  he  fre- 
quently visited,  as  well  as  Corsica,  in  later  and  more 
prosperous  years.  Besides  the  obvious  traces  of  these 
visits  in  "  Le  Nabab,"  and  in  many  short  stories,  they 
gave  him,  in  general,  a  power  of  exotic  description  not 
common  in  France,  and  strengthened  his  Provencal 
imagination,  while  revealing  to  him  its  dangers.  But 
whatever  he  might  owe  to  the  fortunate  necessity  of 


MODERN    FICTION.  —  THE  WANING   OF   NATURALISM.     469 

this  journey,  he  owed  much  more  to  his  marriage  soon 
after  his  return  to  a  lady  whose  literary  talent  com- 
prehended, supplemented,  and  aided  his  own.     He  had   / 
lingered  in  literary  Bohemia  long  enough  to  know  its  / 
charm;   he   left   it   before   he   had   suffered   from  its/ 
dangers. 

Though  for  five  years  in  the  civil  service,  he  was 
always  rather  an  observer  than  a  politician,  and  never 
lost  sight  of  his  profession,  to  which  he  dedicated  him- 
self entirely  after  Moray's  death  (1865).  He  now 
turned  for  a  time  from  fiction  to  the  drama,  for  he  had 
definitely  abandoned  poetry,  and  it  was  not  till  after 
the  war  of  1870  that  he  became  fully  conscious  of  his 
vocation  as  a  novelist,  perhaps  through  the  trials  of 
the  siege  of  Paris  and  the  humiliation  of  his  country, 
which  deepened  his  nature  without  souring  it.1 

The  years  that  immediately  followed  the  war  were 
still  occupied  with  short  stories  and  the  genial  satire 
of  "Tartarin  de  Tarascon,"  but  in  1874  "Fromont 
jeune  et  Risler  aine  "  showed  that  he  was  justified  in 
a  higher  ambition ;  for  while  he  has  since  published 
several  collections  of  short  stories,  it  is  the  great  series 
of  his  Parisian  dramas,  profound  studies  of  life  from 
life,  on  which  his  enduring  fame  will  rest,  though  the 
choice,  distilled  irony  of  "  Tartarin  sur  les  Alpes " 
(1886)  and  "  Port-Tarascon "  (1890)  would  keep  him 
in  lasting  remembrance.2 

1  Daudet's  dramas  are  La  Derniere  idole,  1862  ;  Les  Absents,  1864 ; 
L'CEillet  blanc,  1865  ;  Le  Frere  aine',  1867  ;  Le  Sacrifice,  1869 ;  L'Arle'- 
sienne,  1872  (thought  by  Zola  to  be  his  best) ;  Lise  Tavernier,  1872; 
Le  Char,  1878;  L'Obstacle,  1890.  He  assisted  also  in  dramatizing 
most  of  his  novels,  but  achieved  no  great  theatrical  success. 

2  Besides  novels,  Daudet  published,  after  1874,  "  Contes  choisis," 
1879,  "  Les  Cigognes,"  1883,  "La  Belle- Nivernaise,"  1886,  and  the  two 
volumes  of  literary  and  autobiographical  fragments  already  cited  on 
p.  467. 


470  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

The  story  of  Daudet's  life  is  the  story  of  his  books, 
and  to  trace  the  development  of  his  genius  it  is  neces- 
sary to  consider  his  fiction  in  its  chronological  order ; 
for  while  a  well-defined  individuality  runs  through  it 
all,  some  qualities  will  be  found  to  recede,  while  others 
grow  in  prominence,  with  his  maturing  genius.  The 
"  charm "  which  almost  every  critic  has  attributed  to 
his  work  is  most  strongly  marked  in  his  first  book,  the 
poetry  of  "  Les  Amoureuses,"  with  its  accompanying 
"  Fantaisies  "  (1857-1861).  Both  show  in  its  greatest 
potentiality  the  idyllic  spirit  that  can  be  traced  in 
nearly  all  his  later  work.  These  verses  to  Clairette 
and  Celimene,  to  robins  and  bluebirds,  and  especially 
the  triolets  of  "  Les  Prunes,"  and  the  fairy  fancies  in 
prose,  "  Ames  du  paradis,"  "  Papillon  et  bete  a  bon 
Dieu,"  and  "  Chaperon  rouge,"  are  just  the  songs  and 
the  tales  that  Le  Petit  Chose  would  naturally  write  or 
dream  in  his  Robinson's  Island  at  Nimes,  in  his  truant 
wanderings  at  Lyons,  or  for  his  Petits,  the  primary 
class  at  Alais,  and  even  in  those  first  Paris  days  before 
the  world  came  to  be  "  too  much  with  him."  All  this 
work  is  valuable  to  the  critic  because  it  explains  how 
later  books  of  a  far  higher  order  than  this  came  to 
have  a  romantic,  lyric,  pathetic,  and  optimistic  ele- 
ment, which  by  its  contrast  with  the  realistic,  tragic, 
satiric,  and  pessimistic  foundation  of  his  novels  gives 
them,  not  greater  strength,  but  greater  fascination  and 
charm. 

The  effect  of  Paris  on  the  impressionable  youth  was 
to  set  him  in  search  of  new  modes  of  literary  expres- 
sion. He  essayed,  as  we  have  seen,  the  drama,  and  in 
the  "  Lettres  de  mon  moulin "  made  a  considerable 
advance  toward  the  position  he  was  to  occupy  later. 
These  stories,  published  in  1869,  had  been  begun  three 


MODERN   FICTION. — THE  WANING   OF  NATURALISM.     471 

years  before  in  "  L'Eve'nement,"  a  Parisian  journal. 
The  prevailing  tone  was  still  romantic  and  fanciful,1 
but  there  are  several  stories  that  in  their  pathetic 
humor  and  delicate  observation  strike  a  more  realistic 
key,  and  show  the  follower  of  Balzac,  the  student  of  the 
"  Come'die  humaine." 2  In  grotesque  exaggeration 
"  La  Diligence  de  Beaucaire "  anticipated  "  Tartarin," 
Corsican  and  Algerian  life  were  realistically  studied 
in  several  stories,  "En  Camargue"  showed  unsus- 
pected powers  of  sympathetic  description  of  nature, 
and  in  "  Nostalgies  de  la  caserne "  we  have  the  first 
hint  of  that  psychological  analysis  that  becomes 
the  dominant  note  in  his  most  recent  work.  Prog- 
ress, nowhere  startling,  was  marked  in  many  direc- 
tions. The  "  Letters  "  were  full  of  promises  soon  to 
be  fulfilled. 

For  eight  years  after  the  publication  of  the  first 
"  Lettres  de  mon  moulin,"  Daudet  was  known  as  the 
greatest  master  of  the  short  story  in  France.  His 
work  showed  growing  power  as  it  struck  deeper  roots 
in  the  observation  of  life.  In  his  four  volumes  of 
stories  from  these  years 3  there  are  a  few  pieces  still 
that  recall  the  earlier  manner,4  but  one  is  most  struck 
by  the  glowing  patriotism,  the  growth  of  the  urban 
element,  and  the  development  of  pathetic  social  satire, 
stronger,  fuller,  yet  identical  in  spirit  with  that  of 

1  E.  g.,  La  Chevre  de  M.  Seguin,  La  Mule  du  pape,  L'Elixir  du 
Pere  Gaucher,  Le  Cure'  de  Cucugnan,  Les  fitoiles,  Ballades  en  prose. 

2  Le  Portefeuille  de  Bixiou,  Les  Deux  auberges,  L'Arlesienue. 

8  Contes  du  lundi,  1873;  Contes  et  recits,  1873;  Kobert  Helmont, 
Etudes  et  paysages,  1874;  Femmes  d'artistes,  1874.  The  "Lettres  a 
tin  absent,"  1871,  is  no  longer  in  print.  A  book  for  children,  "Les 
Petits  Robinsons  des  caves,"  belongs  also  to  this  period. 

4  Un  Reveillon  dans  le  marais,  La  Soupe  au  fromage,  Les  Fe'es  de 
France. 


472  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

"  Les  Deux  auberges  "  of  the  antebellum  period,1  and, 
at  times  sinking  to  a  more  tragic  key,  as  in  "  Arthur," 
the  story  of  a  drinking  workman,  whom  it  is  instruc- 
tive to  compare  with  the  Coupeau  of  "  L'Assommoir," 
or  in  "  La  Bataille  du  Pere-Lachaise,"  a  Communistic 
orgy  in  the  tombs  on  the  eve  of  defeat  and  execution. 

These  delicate  cameos  in  words,  which,  as  a  French 
critic  says,  are  "  extremely  simple,  but  never  banal,  and 
often  singular  and  rare,"  show  everywhere  the  influence 
of  the  Franco-German  war.  This  bitter  experience 
taught  him  the  deep  pathos  of  "  Le  Siege  de  Berlin  " 
and  "  La  Derniere  classe,"  the  noble  and  true  poetry 
of  "  Le  Porte-drapeau  "  and  "  Les  Meres ; "  it  inspired 
the  playful  fancy  of  "  Les  Pate's  de  M.  Bonnicar,"  the 
exuberant  satire  of  "La  Defense  de  Tarascon,"  and 
the  bitter  realism  of  "Le  Bac."  Here  are  already 
studies  for  his  Jack,  for  the  Nabab,  and  for  Mora.  His 
humor  has  grown  keener,  his  satire  sharper,  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  darker  side  of  life  is  vastly  more  minute, 
and  yet  his  wide  sympathy  has  suffered  no  loss.  He 
has  proved  his  armor  at  every  part,  and  his  first  ven- 
ture in  the  higher  field  of  the  realistic  novel,  "  Fromont 
jeune  et  Eisler  aine*  "  (1874),  shows  already  the  hand 
of  the  master. 

Hence  the  short  stories  printed  since  1874  may  be 
briefly  dismissed.  They  exhibit  sustained  but  not 
advancing  power.2  For  that  we  must  look  to  the  pro- 
found social  studies  of  his  "  Parisian  Dramas,"  and  to 

1  E.  g.,  Pere  Achille,  Un  Teneur  de  livres,  Le  Turco  de  la  com- 
mune. Un  Decore  du  15  aout,  La   Boheme  en  famille,  Le  Menage 
de  chanteurs.     Psychological  analysis  is    represented  by  "  Maison  a 
vendre  "  and  "  Le  Bac." 

2  "  Contes  choisis  "  (1879)  are  reprinted  from  earlier  publications. 
"  La  Belle  Nivernaise"  (1886)  is  an  exquisite  idyl  of  boy  life.     "  Les 
Cigognes"  (1883)  is  juvenile. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE  WANING  OF   NATURALISM.     473 

the  humorous  Tarasconades  of  his  Tartarin.1  These 
last  demand  and  deserve  a  fuller  notice. 

Tarascon  is  a  city  on  the  Ehone  near  Avignon  and 
not  far  from  Nimes,  the  birthplace  of  Daudet.  In  his 
hands  it  becomes  a  type  of  that  South  of  France  which 
plays  so  large  a  part  in  every  department  of  his  work. 
None  has  caught  as  he,  with  such  delicately  keen  per- 
ception and  such  sympathy,  that  exuberant  character 
that  beneath  the  sun  of  Provence  sees  all  in  a  mirage 
and  lives  in  an  unreal  world,  a  self-created  environ- 
ment, and  yet  charms  in  spite  of  its  persistent  sel£- 
deception.  He  has  himself  described  it  in  his  "  Numa" 
as  "  pompous,  classical,  theatrical ;  loving  parade,  cos- 
tume, the  platform,  banners,  flags,  trumpets  ;  clannish, 
traditional,  caressing,  feline,  with  an  eloquence  bril- 
liant, excited,  and  yet  colorless ;  quick  to  anger,  but 
with  a  little  pretence  in  its  expression,  even  when  the 
anger  is  sincere."  Such  is  the  Midi,  such  are  the 
Nabab  and  Numa,  and  many  others  in  their  different 
kinds,  and  such  is  Tartarin,  the  immortal  type  of 
them  all. 

He  is  first  introduced  to  us  as  the  hero  of  hunting- 

1  The  novels  in  chronological  order  are :  Fromont  jeune  et  Risler 
aine',  1874;  Jack,  1876;  Le  Nabab,  1878;  Rois  en  exil,  1879;  Numa 
Roumestan,  1880;  L'Evangeliste,  1883;  Sapho,  1884;  L'Immortel, 
1888;  Rose  et  Ninette,  1891  ;  La  Petite  paroisse,  1895;  Le  Soutien 
de  famille,  1898.  The  humorous  satires  are :  "  Tartarin  de  Tarascon," 
1872 ;  "  Tartarin  sur  les  Alpes,"  1886 ;  "  Port-Tarascon,"  1890.  "  Entre 
les  f rises  et  la  rampe,"  1894,  is  a  collection  of  theatrical  studies. 

Some  idea  of  the  relative  popularity  of  these  books  may  be  gained 
from  their  sale.  Up  to  the  time  of  Daudet's  death  this  was  approx- 
imately as  follows:  Tartarin  sur  les  Alpes,  188,000;  Sapho,  166,000; 
Tartarin  de  Tarascon,  120,000 ;  Le  Nabab,  97,000 ;  Fromont  jeune 
et  Rieler  aine,  95,000 ;  L'Immortel,  94,000  ;  Numa  Roumestan,  77,000 ; 
Jack,  71,000  ;  L'Evangeliste,  24,000  ;  Les  Rois  en  exil,  22,000.  "  Trente 
ans  de  Paris  "  had  had  a  sale  of  44,000.  The  other  volumes  of  souve- 
nirs and  stories  averaged  about  30,000. 


474  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

parties  who,  for  the  lack  of  game,  shoot  at  caps  that 
they  toss  in  the  air.  A  caged  lion  fires  his  imagina- 
tion, and  insensibly  his  assumption  of  superior  courage 
forces  Tartarin-Quixote,  much  against  the  will  of  his 
other  self,  Tartarin-Sancho,  to  go  to  Algeria  to  hunt 
the  lions  that  have  long  ceased  to  exist  there.  He 
returns,  however,  with  a  melancholy  camel,  almost 
persuaded  that  he  has  really  done  feats  of  heroism 
while  enjoying  an  Oriental  dolce  far  niente,  and  he 
seems  to  have  earned  for  the  rest  of  his  life  the  privi- 
lege of  dazzling  the  imagination  of  his  worthy  fellow- 
citizens  when  this  story  ends.  The  whole  is  one  long 
piece  of  delicious  persiflage  by  a  Provencal  of  his 
brother  Provengals,  often  perilously  grazing  the  bur- 
lesque, but  always  saved  from  buffoonery  by  an  unfail- 
ing tact  that  makes  the  reader  feel  that  it  is  the  comic 
side  of  truth,  and  not  a  caricature. 

Fourteen  years  later  came  "  Tartarin  sur  les  Alpes," 
the  masterpiece  of  French  humor  in  this  century. 
Here  Tartarin-Quixote  has  once  more  involved  his 
brother.  Sancho  in  trouble,  and  to  support  his  dignity 
as  President  of  the  Alpine  Club,  whose  excursions  are 
limited  to  the  pleasant  hill-sides  of  the  Alpilles,  he 
undertakes  a  trip  to  Switzerland  with  all  the  para- 
phernalia of  an  expert  climber.  The  incongruity  of  the 
dangers  conjured  up  by  his  Southern  imagination  with 
the  prosaic  tourist  life  that  surrounds  him  forms  the 
basis  of  the  narrative,  which  introduces  its  protagonist 
with  ice-pick,  climbing-irons,  snow-glasses,  rope,  and 
alpenstock,  into  the  palatial  hotel  on  the  summit  of 
the  Eigi,  where  there  is  an  elevator  and  a  table  d'hote 
with  six  hundred  guests.  But  the  good-humored  satire 
is  by  no  means  confined  to  Tartarin.  It  takes  in  all  man- 
ner of  Alpine  tourists,  from  the  English  miss  and  the 


MODERN  FICTION.  —  THE  WANING  OF   NATURALISM.    475 

Eussian  Nihilistic  maiden  to  the  shady  spirits  of  the 
Jockey  Club,  and  culminates  in  a  colossal  fancy  of  his 
fellow  Tarasconian,  Bompard,  the  Swiss  Exploitation 
Trust,  which,  according  to  him,  keeps  the  country  in 
order  for  visitors,  and  maintains  crevasses  so  as  to  offer 
a  pretence  of  danger.  All  of  which  Tartarin  devoutly 
believes,  and  becomes  as  nonchalant  in  real  peril  as  he 
was  excited  while  hunting  the  tame  chamois  that  was 
fed  in  the  hotel  kitchen  and  taught  to  exhibit  itself  on 
a  cliff  to  attract  strangers.  At  the  close  each  Tarasco- 
nian thinks  he  has  sacrificed  the  life  of  the  other  to 
his  own  safety  by  cutting  the  cord  that  united  them, 
while  both  are  safe  and  sound.  Tartarin  returns  to 
Tarascon  as  Bompard  is  telling  of  his  comrade's  fate. 
The  Alpine  Club  is  a  little  dazed,  but  not  so  very 
much  surprised,  for  Provencals  understand  one  an- 
other. 

"  Port-Tarascon,"  a  story  of  colonization,  is  inferior 
to  the  Alpine  Tartarin,  though  it  is  a  delightful  piece 
of  work  and  has  been  well  translated  by  Henry  James. 
But  Daudet  must  have  felt  that  he  had  worked  that 
vein  out,  for  in  this  book  he  has  brought  Tartarin's 
life  to  a  worthy  close.  It  is  interesting  to  study  this 
side  of  Daudet's  talent,  where  the  poetic  and  romantic 
imagination  of  the  "  Amoureuses  "  and  the  "  Fantaisies  " 
finds  a  free  scope  still,  while  in  the  work  that  remains 
for  us  to  consider  we  shall  see  it  gradually  subordinated 
to  a  realism  more  complete  perhaps  than  that  of  any 
contemporary  novelist. 

For  in  the  "  Parisian  Dramas  "  Daudet  was  a  most 
anxious  student  of  real  life ;  and  it  is  this  truthfulness, 
this  observation,  in  which  all  his  novels  strike  their 
roots,  that  is  the  key  to  his  strength.  He  departs 
from  it  at  times,  as  will  appear,  but  never  without  a 


476  MODERN  FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

conscious  purpose,  though  never,  perhaps,  without  loss.1 
So  when  he  is  maturing  his  first  novel,  he  studies  its 
environment  on  the  spot,  takes  lodgings  among  the 
factories,  and  lets  this  new  life  work  upon  him  and 
for  him.  "Fromont  jeune  et  Eisler  aine"'  is  a 
study  of  an  honest  and  talented  man  whose  efforts 
raise  him  socially  into  a  society  against  the  corruption 
of  which  he  has  no  defence  and  from  which  he  escapes 
only  by  suicide.  In  working  his  way  from  the  shop 
to  the  counting-room  and  from  poverty  to  wealth, 
Eisler  has  not  acquired  the  social  wisdom  that  might 
have  guarded  him  from  marriage  with  Sidonie,  the 
fascinating  but  unscrupulous,  ambitious,  worldly,  and 
revengeful  Parisian  of  the  struggling  middle  class. 
This  evil  genius  is  contrasted  with  the  domestic  sim- 
plicity of  De'sire'e  Dolabelle  and  her  mother,  who  adore 
the  unappreciated  talent  of  the  decayed  actor,  her  father, 
perhaps  the  most  genially  conceived  character  in  the 
novel,  with  many  suggestions  of  the  happiest  creations 
of  Dickens,  one  of  those  rates  who  furnish  the  mark 
for  the  keenest  shafts  of  irony  in  "Jack."  Sidonie 
deceives  her  husband,  degrades  his  brother,  shatters 
Fromont's  conjugal  peace,  and  finds  a  congenial  place 
at  last  on  a  dance-hall  stage.  The  closing  words  of 
the  book  suggest  that  Daudet  regards  her  as  the 
natural  product  of  her  environment. 

"Jack,"  Daudet's  next  and  longest  novel,  is  called 
by  its  author  "  a  work  of  pity,  anger,  and  irony."  This 
narrative  of  a  whole  storm-tossed  existence  shows 
greater  breadth  of  conception  and  description,  and  also 
a  greater  sadness  of  tone ;  for  the  tragedy,  while  less 

1  The  episode  of  the  Joyeuse  family  in  "  Le  Nabab  "  is  an  instance, 
though  even  this  has  a  kernel  of  truth.  See  Trente  ans  de  Paris, 
p.  34. 


MODERN  FICTION.  —  THE  WANING  OF   NATURALISM.     477 

general,  is  more  minute  and  harrowing.  Paris  is  again 
the  centre  of  the  story,  though  its  course  takes  the 
reader  to  Nantes,  to  the  shipyards  of  Indret,  and  into 
the  stoking-room  of  an  ocean  steamer.  The  central 
figure  is  an  illegitimate  child,  petted  and  neglected  at 
home,  but  never  governed,  and  forced  at  last  into  a 
struggle  for  existence,  for  which  he  has  been  studiously 
unfitted,  to  be  crushed  by  the  thoughtlessness  of  his 
mother  and  the  mean  spirit  of  D'Argenton,  the  poet, 
who,  with  his  attendant  group  of  rates,  the  failures  of 
literature  and  art,  forms  a  sort  of  mutual  admiration 
club  envious  only  of  recognized  talent.  In  bringing 
Jack  face  to  face  with  the  sombre  realities  of  a  day- 
laborer's  life,  Daudet  was  first  among  the  Natu- 
ralists to  make  an  honest  study  of  the  condition  of 
the  great  artisan  class.  This  is  at  once  the  most  novel 
and  the  most  effective  part  of  the  book.  The  stoking- 
room,  the  wedding-feast  at  Saint-Hande*,  the  forge  at 
Indret,  are  the  scenes  that  cling  longest  to  the  memory, 
while  the  more  romantically  conc.eived  friends  of  Jack, 
the  humble  Dr.  Eivals,  the  ironworker  Eoudic,  and  the 
camelot  Be'lisaire,  grow  dim  beside  the  good-humored 
thoughtlessness  of  the  mother,  who  spoils,  neglects, 
betrays,  and  ruins  the  son  she  thinks  she  loves. 

"  Le  Nabab,"  two  years  later,  shows  a  greater 
advance  in  epic  and  tragic  power  over  "  Jack  "  than 
"  Jack "  had  done  over  "  Fromont."  Indeed,  in  its 
combination  of  the  pathetic  and  idyllic  with  playful 
humor  and  indignant  satire,  this  is  perhaps  the  most 
characteristic  of  all  Daudet's  novels.  It  owes  no  small 
part  of  its  strength  to  the  skill  with  which  the  author 
turned  to  account  the  observations  of  his  years  as 
secretary  to  the  Due  de  Morny,  whom  he  presented 
here  as  Mora,  with  other  well-known  figures  in  that 


478  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

strange  social  scum  on  the  caldron  of  the  Second 
Empire.  Throughout,  he  has  been  faithful  to  the 
spirit  of  history  if  not  to  its  letter.  He  tells  us  him- 
self in  his  preface  that  the  Nabab  recalls  "a  singular 
episode  of  cosmopolitan  Paris  fifteen  years  ago,"  and 
he  refers  us  to  the  "  Moniteur  omciel "  of  February, 
1864,  for  a  close  parallel  to  the  contest  for  the  Nabab's 
Corsican  seat,  the  chief  difference  being,  though  Daudet 
does  not  say  so,  that  the  true  Nabab  got  his  money  in 
Egypt,  in  ways  even  more  devious  than  those  of 
Jansoulet,  and  that  he  got  himself  elected  deputy  for 
Gard  three  times  by  lavish  use  of  money,  only  to 
find  his  election  thrice  annulled  as  a  useless  and 
inopportune  scandal.  The  true  Nabab  lived  for  some 
years  in  poverty  and  contempt,  and  died  after  the  fall 
of  the  Empire,  —  a  denouement  that  Zola  finds  more 
tragic  than  that  of  the  novel,  though  Daudet  might 
reply  that  it  is  less  dramatic. 

In  Mora  the  Due  de  Morny  is  drawn  by  his  private 
secretary  with  a  kindly  hand  that  hardly  does  justice 
to  his  cynical  selfishness.  "  I  have  painted  him,"  says 
the  author,  "  as  he  loved  to  show  himself  in  his  Eiche- 
lieu-Brummel  attitude.  ...  I  have  exhibited  .  .  .  the 
man  of  the  world  that  he  was  and  wished  to  be; 
assured,  too,  that  while  he  was  alive  he  would  not 
have  been  displeased  to  be  presented  thus."  And 
just  as  Mora  is  in  the  very  letters  of  the  name  but  a 
thin  disguise  for  Morny,  so  Bois-Landry  and  Monpavon 
are  but  slightly  altered  names  of  men  well  known  to 
the  Paris  of  their  time ;  and  critics  claim  to  recognize 
the  originals  of  Moessard,  of  Le  Merquier,  and  of 
Hemerlingue.  Felicia  Euys  was  said  by  some  to  be 
studied  from  Sarah  Bernhardt,  though  others  as  posi- 
tively deny  the  resemblance  ;  all  agree  that  Cardailhac 


MODERN  FICTION.  —  THE  WANING   OF   NATURALISM.    479 

is  the  theatrical  manager  Roqueplan.  In  manner  Jen- 
kins is  Dr.  Olliffe,  but  the  famous  arsenic  pills  belong 
to  another  physician,  and  the  "  Bethlehem  "  is  taken 
almost  literally  from  a  report  on  "  La  Pouponniere," 
an  institution  founded  by  equally  philanthropic  men 
with  similar  intentions  and  like  results. 

In  this  essentially  Parisian  drama  Daudet  has 
drawn  on  his  imagination  almost  solely  for  Madame 
Jenkins  and  her  son  Andre*,  for  De  Gery,  for  Passajon, 
and  for  the  Famille  Joyeuse.  Zola  says  that  Daudet 
told  him  he  thought  this  a  wise  concession  to  popu- 
lar taste,  and  seemed  to  imply  that  it  was  contrary 
to  his  own  judgment,  as  it  was  to  his  critic's.  The 
grotesque  may  be  appropriately  mingled  with  the 
tragic,  but  sentimental  pathos  of  the  "Tiny  Tim" 
type,  however  skilfully  done,  does  not  deepen  the 
impressive  dignity  of  such  scenes  as  the  death  and 
funeral  of  Mora,  the  stern  satire  of  Jansoulet's  end, 
or  the  broad,  epic  strokes  of  "Les  Fetes  du  bey." 
Daudet  continued  to  use  similar  contrasts  in  later 
novels,  but  they  are  less  prominent  and  less  sharp 
as  the  writer  grew  surer  of  his  naturalism. 

His  next  novel,  however,  "  Les  Kois  en  exil,"  was  of 
necessity  less  a  product  of  personal  observation  than 
of  popular  report  and  of  constructive  imagination. 
Hence,  from  our  study  of  Daudet's  methods,  it  will 
cause  no  surprise  to  find  him  saying  in  his  "  Souvenirs  " : 
"  This  is  one  of  my  books  that  gave  me  most  trouble 
to  set  up,  that  I  carried  longest  with  me,  kept  in  my 
head  as  a  title  and  dim  design  as  it  appeared  to  me 
one  evening  on  the  Place  du  Carrousel  through  the 
tragic  rent  in  the  Parisian  sky  made  by  the  ruins 
of  the  Tuileries."  He  wished,  he  says,  to  write  the 
drama  of  princes  self-exiled  to  the  gay  capital  after 


480  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

their  governmental  bankruptcy,  a  book  of  modern 
history  torn  from  the  vitals  of  life,  not  excavated 
from  the  dust  of  archives.  Many  such  rulers  there 
were  in  the  Paris  of  that  day,  from  the  notorious 
Isabella  of  Spain  to  the  dignified  and  melancholy 
king  of  Hanover  and  the  unsavory  Francis  II.  of 
Naples,  whose  heroic  German  wife  seems  to  have 
furnished  more  than  one  trait  for  the  noble  Queen 
Fre'de'rique  of  the  novel.  The  tragic  beauty  of  this 
character,  the  greatest  charm  of  the  book,  shows  a 
more  creative  and  clairvoyant  vision  than  had  appeared 
in  any  of  his  previous  stories.  Other  characters  were 
studied  more  directly  from  life ;  for  instance,  Meraut, 
the  too  ardent  legitimist,  and  that  delightful  exploiter 
of  high  life,  Tom  LeVis ;  but  all  of  Daudet's  exuberant 
imagination  was  needed  to  do  justice  to  the  reality  of 
this  product  of  the  mad  years  of  the  closing  Empire. 
Yet  perhaps  the  most  remarkable  element  in  the  book 
is  its  sympathetic  charm,  so  great  that  it  won  praise 
alike  from  royalist  and  republican. 

But  while,  as  a  study  of  political  psychology,  the 
"  Kings  in  Exile  "  has  great  merits,  it  marks  no  ad- 
vance over  "  Le  Nabab "  as  a  work  of  fiction.  It 
bears  constant  witness  to  the  slow  and  reluctant  pro- 
cess of  its  production.  The  characters,  especially 
Me'raut  and  Fre'de'rique,  may  be  more  subtly  drawn ; 
it  is,  indeed,  just  in  this  direction  that  Daudet  will 
still  make  the  greatest  progress ;  but  yet  we  feel  that 
we  are  moving  in  a  realm  of  thought  and  interests 
foreign  alike  to  him  and  to  us,  and,  while  the  digni- 
fied pathos  that  befits  the  tale  of  the  collapse  of  an 
ancient  social  order  is  not  wanting,  there  are  no  scenes 
of  such  broad  sweep  and  vivid  color  as  were  found  in 
"  Le  Nabab/'  and  reappeared  in  all  their  brilliancy  in 
"  Numa  Eoumestan." 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE  WANING  OF   NATURALISM.    481 

For  while  "  Numa  "  is  a  Parisian  drama,  the  author 
now  turned  for  his  inspiration  to  the  sun  of  his  native 
Provence,  fusing  for  us  the  spirit  of  "  Fromont "  and 
of  "  Tartarin."  Numa,  the  statesman  whose  Southern 
imagination  finds  it  so  easy  to  promise  and  so  hard  to 
keep,  is  so  true  to  nature  that  every  prominent  poli- 
tician of  the  South  of  France  seems  to  have  seen  some 
of  his  features  in  it,  though  few  had  the  magnanimity 
of  Gambetta  to  laugh  at  the  thought  of  intentional 
portraiture.  A  more  individualized  study  of  the  same 
race  is  the  tambourinist  Valmajour.  He,  as  Daudet 
confesses,  had  his  living  parallel ;  the  rest  were  "  bun- 
dles of  diverse  sticks,"  a  phrase  which  he  borrowed 
from  Montaigne.  The  author  tells  us  that  he  regards 
"  Numa  "  as  "  the  least  incomplete  of  all  his  works," 
and  in  its  structure  and  plot  it  is  certainly  more 
closely  knit  than  the  "  Nabab,"  with  its  series  of 
brilliant  but  disconnected  scenes.  He  says,  also,  that 
it  is  the  book  into  which  he  has  put  most  invention, 
and  contrasts  it  with  the  labored  production  of  "  Kings 
in  Exile." 

It  is  probable  that  we  should  understand  this, 
not  as  though  he  had  been  here  more  independent 
of  those  little  note-books  to  which  he  often  refers  in 
his  "  Souvenirs,"  but  rather  that  in  "  Numa "  these 
observations  seemed  to  him  more  completely  and  suc- 
cessfully fluxed  in  his  mind.  As  a  result  of  this,  the 
story  becomes  more  consecutive,  more  closely  articu- 
lated, less  a  series  of  episodes,  than  the  "  Nabab,"  or 
the  "  Kings  in  Exile."  There  is  here  less  breadth  of 
narration,  but  an  equal  humor  and  a  profounder  analy- 
sis of  character,  while  the  tragic  notes,  if  less  deep, 
are  more  sustained.  For  the  whole  warp  and  woof  of 
the  book  is  a  tragedy  of  effervescent  optimistic  imagi- 

31 


482  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

nation  in  its  jostling  with  the  realities  of  life.  This 
generous  emotion  distorts  the  judgment  of  Nuina, 
whose  facile  promises  and  light-hearted  thoughtless- 
ness destroy  the  happiness  of  one  existence  after 
another,  while  his  own  buoyancy  shields  him  in  great 
measure  from  the  troubles  he  causes,  —  a  result  that 
is  quite  true  to  nature.  It  is  the  same  mental 
mirage  that  he  had  already  studied  from  the  comic 
side  in  "  Tartarin "  that  appears  here  in  its  tragic 
aspects,  while  in  the  love  of  the  consumptive  Hor- 
tense  the  same  psychologic  condition  is  exhibited 
in  its  idyllic  possibilities ;  in  the  tambourinist  Val- 
majour  it  is  tragi-comic,  and  wholly  comic  in  Bompard, 
a  figure  borrowed  from  "Tartarin."  Opposed  to  all 
these  in  character  is  Eosalie,  Numa's  wife,  who  has 
enough  Parisian  clairvoyance  to  see  the  world  as  it 
is,  but  is  not  the  happier  for  the  vision.  Nowhere  had 
Daudet's  satire  been  so  delicate  or  so  pitiless  as  in  this 
book,  which  marks  the  beginning  of  the  third  phase  of 
his  genius,  and  in  its  peculiar  excellence  remained 
unsurpassed. 

"L'Evange'liste"  continues  the  closer  method  of 
composition,  and  like  all  the  later  novels  it  is  shorter 
than  "  Fremont,"  "  Jack,"  or  the  "  Nabab."  Its  author 
calls  it  an  "  observation "  and  a  roman  in  distinc- 
tion from  earlier  drames,  for  it  is  more  a  psychological 
study  than  a  novel  of  action,  though  its  movement  is 
most  rapid  and  vigorous,  and  the  whole  seems  written 
under  the  pressure  of  some  personal  emotion,  realizing 
that  rare  combination  "  intensity  of  feeling  and  sage 
simplicity  of  execution."  The  morbid  pathology  of 
religious  enthusiasm  and  ambition  for  spiritual  domin- 
ion is  exhibited  in  Madame  Autheman  and  Mademoi- 
selle de  Beuil ;  its  stern  self -sacrifice  and  rooting  out 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE  WANING  OF   NATURALISM.     483 

of  human  affections  for  what  it  calls  the  love  of  God 
is  shown  in  the  pitiful  story  of  Eline  Ebsen ;  while  as 
a  toil  to  these  Protestants  the  devout  Catholic  Henri- 
ette  serves  to  illustrate  the  weakening  of  character 
that  may  arise  from  too  great  spiritual  dependence. 
To  positive,  relentless,  logical  force  of  character  the 
weaker  and  simpler  natures  yield,  or  are  crushed. 
Never  has  Daudet  been  so  pessimistic  as  here.  All 
who  win  our  sympathy  end  by  claiming  our  pity. 
Madame  Autheman  drives  her  husband  to  suicide  by 
her  coldness ;  she  breaks  the  heart  of  E  line's  mother 
and  of  her  betrothed  by  nursing  the  young  girl's 
religious  fervor  into  monomania ;  she  wrecks  the  for- 
tunes of  the  good  pastor  Aussandon  and  the  humble 
domestic  joys  of  Eomain  and  Silvanine,  who  cross  her 
path.  The  humor  of  the  tale  is  wholly  saturnine,  the 
touch  is  light ;  but  the  pen-point  is  sharp,  its  caustic 
mordant  falls  drop  by  drop  on  cant  and  hypocrisy,  and 
exposes  them  by  excoriation. 

"  L'Evangeliste "  was  followed  by  "  Sapho,"  the 
most  widely  circulated  of  Daudet's  novels,  partly  be- 
cause of  its  literary  strength,  partly  because  its  subject 
interested  a  wider  audience.  Dedicating  his  novel 
"  To  my  sons  when  they  are  twenty,"  he  proposed  to 
show  in  it  the  dangers  to  heart,  mind,  character,  and 
worldly  success  that  spring  from  collage,  that  attempt 
at  domestic  life  outside  of  legitimate  marriage.  This 
particular  social  ulcer  seems  a  grave  peril  in  France, 
but  in  Anglo-Saxon  lands  it  has  never  been  a  serious 
menace,  and  so  to  us  this  story  has  less  interest  and 
value,  in  spite  of  its  minute  psycho-physiology,  its 
serious  purpose,  and  occasional  passages  of  great 
strength,  which  are  unrelieved  here,  as  in  "  L'Bvange'- 
liste  "  by  lighter  touches.  But  that  this  was  due  only 


484  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

to  a  self-imposed  restraint,  and  that  Daudet  had  lost 
none  of  his  humorous  power,  was  attested  two  years 
after  "  Sapho  "  in  "  Tartarin  sur  les  Alpes." 

"  L'lmmortel "  offers  a  more  varied  picture.  Pri- 
marily it  is  a  satire  on  myopic  scholarship  and  the 
French  Academy,  a  satire  so  obviously  and  inexpli- 
cably unjust  that  it  blinds  the  reader  at  first  to  the 
real  value  of  a  work  which  none  but  Daudet  could  have 
written.  The  lightness  of  humor  that  seemed  excluded 
by  design  from  "  Numa,"  "  Sapho,"  and  "  L'Evangeliste," 
plays  all  through  "  L'Immortel "  with  lambent  flames, 
making  the  whole  a  veritable  "  literary  Ley  den-jar." 
That  episode  at  De  Kosen's  tomb,  with  its  inscription, 
"  Love  is  stronger  than  death,"  has  a  vis  comica  that 
makes  it  one  of  the  best  presentations  in  literature 
of  a  situation  as  old  as  civilization,  and  so  true  to 
human  nature  that  we  may  trace  it  from  China  to 
mediaeval  England.  Here  the  widow  in  her  weeds, 
like  a  nineteenth-century  "  Matron  of  Ephesus,"  receives 
the  first  caress  of  her  new  lover,  who  by  a  sudden 
inspiration,  that  is  one  of  Daudet' s  happiest  hits,  has 
transferred  his  facile  affections  to  her  from  her  rival 
at  the  moment  when  both  her  disappointed  ambition 
and  his  own  are  in  need  of  consolation.  There  is  an 
epic  breadth,  too,  in  the  trial  of  Fage  that  had  not 
been  equalled  since  "Le  Nabab."  Yet  on  the  whole 
the  book  is  unsatisfactory.  Not  only  is  the  object  of 
attack  unwisely  chosen,  the  attack  itself  has  not  suffi- 
cient appearance  of  justice  to  carry  our  sympathy  in 
spite  of  its  partial  foundation  in  fact.  It  seems  hardly 
credible  that  the  gullible  Astier-Rehu  should  be  of  the 
Academy.  In  any  case  he  is  not  typical  of  it.  The 
intrigues  of  his  wife  are  probable  enough,  but  her  con- 
temptuous discarding  of  Astier  at  the  close  is  at  least 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE  WANING   OF  NATURALISM.     485 

as  inexplicable  as  it  is  cruel.  Far  more  interesting 
are  the  secondary  characters,  Astier's  son  Paul,  the 
"  social  struggler,"  the  unscrupulous  believer  in  the 
survival  of  the  smartest,  Freydet,  the  aristocratic 
aspirant  for  academic  recognition,  and  the  book- 
binder Fage,  the  evil  genius  of  the  book,  who,  like 
Tom  Levis,  recalls  the  exaggerated  manner  of  Dickens. 
Interesting,  too,  is  the  introduction  into  the  story  of 
the  author  himself  under  the  mask  of  Vedrine,  and 
the  thin  disguise  of  his  friend  Zola  as  Dalzon. 

"  L'Immortel "  was  followed  by  "  Port-Tarascon," 
and  this  by  "Rose  et  Ninette"  (1891),  a  slighter  study 
than  its  predecessors,  but  yet  an  analysis  as  careful 
and  as  earnest  as  any  of  them,  of  the  effects  of  the 
then  recent  divorce  laws  connected  with  the  name 
of  Senator  Naquet  (1886),  both  on  the  separated 
parties  and  on  their  children  who  may  be  old  enough 
to  feel  the  changed  and  strained  relations. 

In  "La  Petite  paroisse"  (1895),  Daudet  devoted 
his  talent  to  a  study  of  jealousy  in  its  various  shades 
from  the  voluble  rage  of  Kosine  and  the  tardy  retro- 
spective prudence  of  the  old  forester,  Sautecoeur,  to 
its  culmination  in  Richard,  strong  in  body,  weak  in 
will,  betrayed  because  despised.  Daudet's  last  novel, 
"  Soutien  de  famille,"  is  in  part  the  story  of  a  modern 
Hamlet,  oppressed  by  responsibility  too  great  for  his 
spirit,  in  part  a  bitterly  sarcastic  portrayal  of  political 
conditions  under  the  Third  Republic. 

Two  features,  one  stylistic,  the  other  ethical,  are 
noteworthy  in  "  La  Petite  paroisse."  Here  first  Daudet 
adopted  the  symbolic  method  that  Zola  and  Ibsen 
also  use  with  such  effect.  The  rhythmic  recurrence 
of  the  little  church  marks  every  stage  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  theme  over  which  it  seems  to  preside. 


";•/  486  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

But  still  more  significant  is  the  recognition  of  the 
evangelical  ethics  of  the  Russian  school  as  a  present 
moral  force  in  French  society,  before  which  the  stern 
pessimism  of  the  older  Naturalists,  with  its  retributive 
justice,  deliquesces  into  sentimental  pity  and  weak 
pardon,  —  another  phase  of  the  anaemia  of  the  will, 
a  sort  of  moral  anaesthetic  with  which  our  fin  de  siecle 
is  toying.  Daudet,  indeed,  treats  this  spirit  with  deli- 
cate irony ;  but  yet  he  yields  to  it  somewhat,  and  so 
the  psychic  analysis,  both  in  the  case  of  Eichard  and 
of  his  wife,  Lydie,  becomes  much  looser  than  is  usual 
in  the  better  work  of  this  author. 

The  general  characteristics  of  Daudet's  earlier 
manner  are  grace,  charm,  and  pathos,  all  qualities 
that  seem  to  belong  to  that  sunny  South  of  France 
which  he  has  satirized  so  playfully  in  "  Tartarin,"  so 
kindly  in  "  Le  Nabab,"  so  sternly  in  "  Nurna  Roumes- 
tan."  To  these  elements  he  added,  in  growing  meas- 
ure after  1871,  a  minute,  careful  observation,  which 
gave  him  a  keener  insight  into  social  wrongs,  and 
changed  his  playful  humor  to  bitter  satire.  But  to 
this  naturalistic  temper  he  brought  the  mind  of  an 
idyllic  poet,  and  it  is  this  that  differentiates  him  from 
Zola  and  his  school,  as  well  as  from  their  predecessors, 
Stendhal  and  Balzac,  and  gives  him  many  points  of 
nervous  contact  with  Dickens,  so  that  his  mind  "gal- 

o 

lops  in  the  midst  of  the  real,  and  now  and  again 
makes  sudden  leaps  into  the  realm  of  fancy;"  for, 
as  Zola  says,  "nature  has  placed  him  where  poetry 
ends,  and  reality  begins."  This  poet's  vision  gives  to 
much  of  Daudet's  work  the  appearance  of  a  kindly 
optimism  that  prefers,  even  in  evil,  to  see  the  ridicu- 
lous rather  than  the  base,  though  in  his  later  work 
he  separated  these  elements,  and  became  either  frankly 


MODERN  FICTION. — THE  WANING  OF  NATURALISM.      487 

humorous  or  profoundly  earnest.  But  a  permanent 
result  of  his  temperament  was  that  his  satire  kept 
to  the  last  much  of  the  irony  that  originally  char- 
acterized it  almost  altogether.  This  irony  is  the 
hardest  to  seize,  the  most  evanescent  of  all  literary 
forms,  but  it  is  one  of  the  most  charming  of  all ;  and, 
in  one  with  as  keen  a  sense  of  humor  as  Daudet,  one 
of  the  most  effective.  It  betrays  its  possessor,  how- 
ever, into  a  greater  subjectivity,  more  expression  of 
personal  sympathy  for  his  characters,  than  is  consis- 
tent with  the  canons  of  strict  naturalism.  This  is 
especially  noticeable  in  "  Fromont  "  and  "  Jack,"  but 
Nurna  and  Astier  win  his  sympathy  at  the  last,  and 
his  Nabab  has  it  from  the  first  in  spite  of  all  his  faults 
and  foibles..  Yet  his  subjectivity  is  more  veiled  than 
that  of  Dickens,  and  often  suggests  the  more  delicate 
processes  of  Thackeray. 

The  poetic  element,  as  has  been  shown,  was  most 
prominent  in  the  earlier  work,  and  it  is  in  this  that  we 
find  the  greatest  care  for  form.  An  analysis  of  even 
the  slighter  sketches  will  reveal  conscientious  elabo- 
ration in  structure  and  phraseology,  though  the  artist 
in  him  preserved  his  work  from  the  extreme  meticu- 
lousness  of  Flaubert.  But  when  we  come  to  the 
longer  novels,  we  shall  find  this  care  more  manifested 
in  the  working  up  of  single  episodes  than  in  the  struc- 
ture of  the  whole.  He  had  not  the  architectural  power 
of  Zola,  but  rather  the  style  of  an  impressionist  painter. 
In  many  ways  he  suggests  a  comparison  with  Millet. 
For  just  as  such  a  painter  might  be  willing  to  sacrifice 
photographic  realism  to  effect,  so  the  word-painter 
allows  himself  liberties  with  the  dictionary  and  a  pic- 
turesque freedom  in  the  use  of  tenses,  though  more 
sparingly  in  the  novels  that  follow  "  Numa  Koumes- 


488  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

tan,"  and  these  artifices  produce  delicate  shades  of  im- 
pression, the  causes  of  which  quite  escape  the  ordinary 
reader.1 

All  that  can  be  observed  —  the  individual  picture, 
scene,  character  —  Daudet  will  render  with  wonderful 
accuracy,  and  the  later  novels  show  an  increasing  firm- 
ness of  touch,  limpidity  of  style,2  and  wise  simplicity 
in  the  use  of  the  sources  of  pathetic  emotion,  such  as 
befits  the  cautious  Naturalist.  But  the  transitions 
from  episode  to  episode  or  from  scene  to  scene  are  in 
the  earlier  novels  often  strangely  abrupt,  suggesting 
the  manner  of  the  Goncourts.  It  seems  at  times  as 
though  Daudet  were  in  haste  to  pass  over  the  treacher- 
ous quicksand  of  fancy  to  the  sure  ground  of  the  hu- 
man document.  As  a  rule  one  of  these  novels  is  a 
series  of  carefully  elaborated  chapters ;  but  the  reader 
must  make  for  himself  the  leap  from  one  to  another, 
must  be  prepared  for  abrupt  changes  of  scene  and  time, 
and  even  for  developments  in  character  of  which  the 
text  will  afford  only  a  hint  or  passing  allusion.  It  is 
not  easy,  for  instance,  to  account  for  the  acts  or 
thoughts  of  Countess  Padovani  in  "  L'Immortel,"  nor 
for.  those  of  Felicia  in  "  Le  Nabab,"  without  summon- 
ing imagination  to  supplement  the  material  given  us  ; 
not  indeed  that  their  conduct  seems  inexplicable  or 
improbable,  but  only  that  the  author  asks  the  co- 
operation of  his  readers.  Then,  too,  especially  in  the 
earlier  novels  the  action  is  interrupted  by  the  intrusion 

1  Brunetiere,  1.  c.  pp.  90,  94,  108,  illustrates  and  develops  these 
ideas  with  much  ingenuity.     Of  course  the  word  "impressionist"  is 
not  used  here  in  its  narrower  technical  sense. 

2  Such  a  sentence  as  that  beginning  "  Oh  !  vers  trois  heures,"  and 
stretching  over  more  than  a  page  of  "  Le  Nabab"  (pp.  215-217)  to 
end  in  an  anacoluthon,  would  be  sought  in  vain  in  any  novel  after 
"  L'Evangeliste." 


MODERN   FICTION.  — THE  WANING 'OF  NATURALISM.     489 

of  episodes  interesting  in  themselves,  but  unduly  elabo- 
rated in  view  of  the  general  plan. 

It  is  not  clear  how  much  of  this  lack  of  close  articu- 
lation is  due  to  the  method  of  composition.  Daudet 
tells  us  that  he  sketched  out  his  first  drafts  at  white 
heat,  living  his  scenes,  and  of  course  laying  stress  on 
the  high  lights  in  his  canvas.  Then,  when  once  the 
characters  are  all  alive  in  his  mind,  he  sets  them  to 
work,  "  he  gives  us  what  has  made  his  heart  beat  and 
his  nerves  throb,  and  his  personages  are  dramatic  and 
picturesque  because  they  have  lived  in  his  mind." * 
These  are  not  novels  with  a  purpose,  starting  from 
some  preconceived  conception;  they  are  the  result  of 
that  "  multitude  of  little  note-books,"  always  with  him 
and  always  accumulating  new  material.  Around  a 
central  figure  others  group  themselves ;  the  notes  be- 
come a  book.  "  After  nature,"  he  said,  "  I  never  had 
any  other  method."  And  that  he  may  attain  this  the 
more  fully,  he  denies  himself  a  too  careful  revision  of 
the  general  scheme  of  his  work,  hastening  to  commit 
the  early  chapters  to  print  lest  the  whole  should  lose 
through  elaboration  its  passion,  sympathy,  and  straight- 
forward natural  diction.2  Over  details,  however,  he 
works  slowly;  and  he  told  Mr.  Sherard  that  he 
wrote  "each  manuscript  three  times  over,  and  would 
write  it  as  many  times  more  if  he  could." 

These  native  qualities  combined  with  this  method 
eventually  produced  a  style  that  attains  the  highest 
effects  of  art  without  artificiality,  and  is  at  once  clas- 
sical and  modern.  In  this,  as  in  much  else,  Daudet 
forms  an  instructive  contrast  to  Zola,  his  greatest  con- 

1  Trente  ans  de  Paris,  p.  280.     Cp.  also  Pellissier,  p.  351,  who 
seems  to  have  borrowed  from  Zola. 

2  Trente  ans  de  Paris,  p.  283. 


490  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

temporary  in  French  fiction,  "  of  the  same  school  but 
not  of  the  same  family."  Zola  is  methodical,  Daudet 
spontaneous.  Zola  works  with  documents,  Daudet 
from  the  living  model.  Zola  is  objective,  Daudet  with 
equal  scope  and  fearlessness  shows  more  personal  feel- 
ing and  hence  more  delicacy.  And  in  style  also,  Zola 
is  vast,  architectural ;  Daudet  slight,  rapid,  subtle, 
lively,  suggestive.  Both  have  in  them  elements  of  the 
poet  and  idealist ;  but  Zola  is  essentially  epic,  Daudet 
more  idyllic.  And,  finally,  in  their  philosophy  of  life, 
Zola  inspires  a  hate  of  vice  and  wrong,  Daudet  wins 
a  love  for  what  is  good  and  true.  Zola's  pessimism 
may  be  a  tonic  for  strong  minds,  Daudet's  is  less 
likely  to  be  misunderstood,1  while  in  them  both  there 
is  a  noble  earnestness  that  we  miss  in  the  later  Natural- 
ists or  the  decadent  Psychologists,  in  Maupassant  and 
in  all  but  the  latest  work  of  Bourget,  Prdvost,  and 
Margueritte. 

The  genius  of  Daudet  and  Zola  compels  popular 
recognition  as  well  as  critical  consideration.  The  only 
living  French  novelist  whose  books  have  a  circulation 
approaching  theirs  is  Georges  Ohnet,  a  writer  whose 
popularity  is  more  interesting  than  his  stories  because 
it  explains,  though  it  does  not  excuse,  the  contempt 
of  the  Goncourts  for  the  favor  of  the  great  public,  and 
also  because  it  shows  how  the  crassest  form  of  Eo- 

1  The  optimistic  note  of  the  earlier  work  was  so  far  dominated 
by  the  pessimistic,  especially  after  "  Le  Nabab,"  that  Pellissier's 
classification  of  Daudet  as  an  optimist,  though  seconded  by  Lemaitre, 
seems  hardly  justified.  It  is,  of  course,  true  that  pathos  implies 
optimism ;  but  this  is  precisely  the  element  that  was  most  subor- 
dinated in  the  work  of  the  third  period,  until  "  La  Petite  paroisse  " 
gave  promise  of  a  fourth  manner.  With  the  above  parallel  between 
Daudet  and  Zola  may  be  compared  Pellissier,  p.  349,  to  whom  I  owe 
several  suggestions. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE  WANING  OF  NATURALISM.      491 

manticism  retains  its  hold  on  the  great  mass  of  readers, 
be  the  spirit  of  the  time  never  so  naturalistic.  Of 
Ohnet  it  is  sufficient  to  remember,  first,  that  he  is 
popular,  then  that  each  phrase  of  the 'following  appre- 
ciation of  his  talent  by  Jules  Lemaitre  is  so  true  that 
I  know  not  how  to  better  his  instruction.  "You 
find  in  him,"  says  this  genial  critic,  ''the  elegance  of 
the  chromo,  the  nobility  of  clock-bronzes,  the  posing 
of  a  strolling  actor,  smirking  optimism,  Eomantic  sen- 
timentality, high-breeding  as  the  concierge's  daughters 
conceive  it,  aristocracy  as  Emma  Bovary  imagines  it, 
elegant  style  as  M.  Homais  comprehends  it.  It  is 
Feuillet  without  grace  or  delicacy,  Cherbuliez  without 
wit  or  philosophy,  Theuriet  without  poetry  or  frankness, 
the  triple  essence  of  banality." 1 

But  while  Ohnet  was  gaining  the  ear  of  the  com- 
mercial class  and  the  great  bourgeoisie,  the  frivolity 
of  the  aristocracy  found  a  voice  in  the  short  stories 
of  Lavedan,  inferior  to  Maupassant's  in  stylistic 
beauty  and  self-restraint,  but  equal  to  those  master- 
pieces in  delicate  irony,  and  superior  perhaps  in  wit, 
which  is  a  somewhat  rare  quality  in  contemporary 
France,  and  will  be  so  long  as  the  negative  influences 
of  Kenan's  aristocratic  pessimism  prevail  over  the  old 
sane  and  sound  esprit  gaulois.  Nor  should  we  be 
wholly  silent  concerning  that  other  sparkling  mirror  of 
aristocratic  frivolity,  Gyp,2  a  great-grand-niece  of  the 

1  Lemaitre,  Contemporains,  i.  354.     Ohnet  was  born  1848.     Chro- 
nology of  his  chief  novels  :  Serge  Panine,  1881  ;  Le  Maitre  des  forges, 
1882  ;   La  Comtesse  Sarah,   1883  ;   Lise  Fleuron,   1884 ;   La   Grande 
Marniere,  1885  ;   Volonte',  1888  ;    Docteur  Rameau,  1889. 

2  Born,  as  Vapereau  discreetly  notes,  "  vers  1850."     Characteristic 
volumes  are :   Petit  Bob,    1882  ;    Autour  du  manage,    1883  ;  Mile. 
Loulou,  1888 ;   La  Bassinoire,  1909. 


492  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

Eevolutionary  orator  Mirabeau.  Her  books,  like  the 
society  in  which  she  moves,  are  full  of  blague,  light- 
hearted  insouciance,  and  an  irony  always  barbed  and 
stinging  and  often  malicious  as  well.  Hers  is  a  wit 
without  reverence,  a  talent  without  sincerity,  artistic  or 
ethical.  Thus  she  unites  the  charm  and  the  poison 
of  that  exquisite  fin  de  siecle  whose  luxury  is  ever 
merging  in  a  corruption  that  has  found  a  sternly 
prophetic  denunciator  in  De  Vogue*,  the  translator  of 
Tolstoi,  with  his  earnest  and  growing  "  Neo-Christian  " 
school. 

Pierre  Loti,1  who  since  1880  has  charmed  a  cuk 
tured  public  with  exotic  sketches  and  in  1891  suc- 
ceeded Feuillet  in  the  French  Academy,  brought  to 
strange  horizons  an  exquisite  power  of  observation 
that  gives  him  a  place  unchallenged  and  apart  in  his 
generation.  Description  is  the  charm  of  all  his  works, 
but  their  fascination  is  increased  by  an  exquisitely 
vague  melancholy,  more  sincere  than  Chateaubriand's, 
more  frank  and  honest  in  its  self-revelation.  Indeed, 
in  "  Le  Eoman  d'un  enfant "  he  seems  almost  eager  to 
lay  before  the  world  the  progress  of  his  soul  from 

1  Loti  is  the  pseudonym  of  Pierre  Viaud,  who  was  born  in  1850,  and 
has  been  connected  with  the  navy  since  1867.  Chronology  and  scenes 
of  his  chief  works:  Aziyade  (Constantinople),  1879;  Le  Mariage  de 
Loti  (Tahiti),  1880;  Roman  d'un  spahi  (Algeria),  1881;  Mon  frere 
Ives  (ocean  and  Brittany).  1883:  Les  Trois  dames  de  la  Kasbah 
(Algeria),  1884:  Le  Pecheur  d'Islaude  (Iceland),  1886;  Madame 
Chrysantheme  (Japan),  1887  :  An  Maroc  (Morocco),  1890  :  Le  Desert 
(Syria),  1895;  La  Galile'e  (Palestine),  1895;  Rainuntcho,  1897; 
Matelot,  1898;  Les  Derniers  jours  de  Pekin,  1901;  L'Inde,  1903; 
Vers  Ispahan,  1904  ;  La  Troisieme  jeunesse  de  Mme.  Prune,  1905  ;  Les 
De'senchantees,  1906;  La  Mort  de  Philas,  1908.  Partly  autobio- 
graphical are :  Le  Roman  d'un  enfant,  1 890,  and  Le  Livre  de  pitie  et 
de  la  mort,  1891. 

Criticism :  Lemaitre,  Contemporains,  iii.  91  ;  Doumic,  ifecrivains 
d'aujourd'hui ;  Revue  bleue,  February,  1895. 


MODERN   FICTION. — THE  WANING   OF   NATURALISM.     493 

Protestant  severity  through  Catholic  beauty  to  pes- 
simistic doubt,  to  the  "  horrible  consciousness  of  the 
vanity  of  vanities  and  the  dust  of  dusts." 

This  pessimism  was  not  new,  but  in  him  first  it  re- 
vealed itself  in  a  receptive  sympathy  for  the  rare  and 
exotic  experiences  that  his  naval  life  brought  to  him 
in  richer  measure  than  had  fallen  to  the  lot  of  Ber- 
nardin  or  Chateaubriand ;  but  neither  of  these  writers 
shows  Loti's  delicate  sensitiveness  to  exotic  nature  as  it 
is  reflected  in  the  foreign  mind  and  heart.  What  a 
strange  yet  what  a  real  world  he  has  conjured  up  for 
us  in  "  Loti's  Marriage,"  —  Otaheite,  that  Eden  of  the 
senses,  a  veritable  Isle  of  Avalon,  where  all  seems  joy- 
ous ease,  where  love  is  but  the  fulfilment  of  nature's 
law,  and  sin  is  unknown,  because  there  is  no  ungrati- 
fied  desire  !  How  sweetly  simple,  how  morally  infan- 
tile, is  Loti's  bride,  Earahu  !  And  with  what  firm 
delicacy  the  author  shows  us  how  his  hero  has  brought 
with  him  from  our  western  world  not  only  the  burden 
but  the  dignity  of  a  life  of  struggle  with  nature  and 
self  that  drives  him  at  last  from  dreamful  ease  to  active 
life,  grieved  at  heart  but  clarified  in  mind ;  for  this  may 
be  sweeter,  but  that  is  higher. 

Less  vague  but  as  strange  is  the  devouring  passion 
and  tragic  fatality  of  the  Turkish  "  Aziyade* ; "  and 
this  pessimistic  determinism  grows  still  deeper  in  "  A 
Spain's  Komance,"  where  Fatou-gaye  is  a  true  lete 
humaine,  sunk  in  moral  slumber  or  quivering  with 
ferocious  joys.  Here  the  very  landscape  is  cruel, 
sterile,  desolating,  hardly  more  barren  beneath  its  blind- 
ing sun  than  the  broad  reaches  of  ocean,  whose  spirit, 
vast  and  indefinable,  gives  a  unique  charm  to  "  My 
Brother  Ives  "  and  "  The  Iceland  Fisherman,"  probably 
artistically  his  strongest  works/severely  simple  in  drama 


494  MODERN  FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

and  situation,  but  wonderful  in  the  subtly  conveyed 
sensations  of  Breton  village  scenes  or  of  tropic  and 
polar  seas.  Then  follows  "Madame  Chrysantheme," 
that  enigmatical  little  Japanese,  so  naive  in  her  un- 
morality,  as  incomprehensible  and  as  fascinating  as 
Fatou-gaye  or  Aziyade*,  and  inferior  only  to  the  incom- 
parable Earahu.  It  is  astonishing  how  beneath  the 
artist's  hand  the  whole  Japanese  environment  has  be- 
come real,  not  externally  in  photographic  pictures,  but 
in  its  inner  nature.  Loti  gives  us  the  impression  less 
of  a  country  than  of  a  life,  a  mode  of  mental  and  moral 
being  unlike  any  we  have  known. 

The  means  by  which  he  produces  these  remarkable 
effects  are,  as  with  all  great  artists,  extremely  simple. 
The  style  is  direct,  the  vocabulary  small,  the  moral 
situations  familiar,  the  characters  not  complex.  But 
this  very  simplicity  strikes  the  key-note  of  the  semi- 
civilization  he  describes,  and  aids  that  approximation 
of  the  primitive  and  the  present,  of  our  complexity 
with  their  simplicity,  that  gives  Loti's  work  its  peculiar 
charm.  But  his  place  is  unique,  apart  from  the  normal 
lines  of  novelistic  development.  He  has  no  unmediate 
literary  ancestor,  and  he  has  no  pupil  worthy^fehe  name. 

Bourget1  brings  us  back  to  the  direct  line  of  Nat- 

1  Born  1852.  Poetry:  La  Vie  inquiete,  1874;  Edel,  1878;  Les 
Aveux,  1882.  Criticism  and  travel:  Essais  de  psychologie,  1883; 
Nouveaux  essais,  1885;  Etudes  et  portraits  (2  vols.),  1888,  1889; 
Psychologie  de  1'amour  moderne,  1890;  Sensations  d'ltalie,  1891; 
Nouveaux  pastels,  1891  ;  Outre-mer,  1895.  Fiction  :  L'Irreparable, 
1884;  Cruelle  e'nigme,  1885;  Un  Crime  d'amour,  1886;  Andre'  Cor- 
nelis,  1887;  Mensonges,  1887;  Le  Disciple,  1889;  La  Terre  promise, 
1892  ;  Cosmopolis,  1892 ;  Un  Scruple,  1893 ;  Steeplechase  and  Un  Saint, 
1894  ;  Une  Idylle  tragique,  1896  ;  La  Duchesse  bleue,  1898  ;  Drames  de 
famille,  1899  ;  Le  Fantome,  1901 ;  L'Etape,  1902  ;  Monique,  1902;  Un 
Divorce,  1904  ;  L' Emigre',  1907  ;  Detours  de  coeur  (short  stories),  1908. 

Criticism :  Lemaitre,   Contemporains,   iii.  339,   iv.  291  ;  Doumic, 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE  WANING   OF  NATURALISM.     495 

alistic  decadence.  He  carries  realistic  observation 
beyond  the  externals  that  fixed  the  attention  of  Zola 
and  Maupassant  to  states  of  the  mind,  and  thus  strives 
to  unite  the  method  of  Stendhal  to  that  of  Balzac. 
Indeed  it  is  to  him  and  the  psychological  school  that 
has  gathered  around  him  that  Stendhal  owes  his  re- 
nascent fame.  Bourget  began  his  literary  career  as 
a  reviewer.  A  volume  of  verses  published  at  twenty- 
two  earned  him  from  Emile  Augier  the  name  of 
"  melancholy  pig/'  but  a  few  years  later  he  reappeared 
with  riper  mind  and  to  far  better  advantage  in  literary 
essays  on  the  writers  who  had  most  influenced  his  own 
development,  —  the  philosophers  Eenan,  Taine,  and 
Amiel ;  the  poets  Baudelaire  and  Leconte  de  Lisle ;  the 
dramatist  Dumas  fils,  and  the  novelists  Turgenieff, 
the  Goncourts,  and  Stendhal.  Here  a  studious  disposi- 
tion and  the  complete  control  of  very  varied  and  wide 
reading  stood  him  in  good  stead ;  but  these  qualities 
that  won  him  critical  recognition  militated  against  his 
success  as  a  novelist  or  poet,  for  in  these  fields  crea- 
tive imagination  was  demanded  rather  than  scholarly 
analysis. 

Bourget  calls  himself  a  "  moralist  of  the  decadence," 
and  again  "  a  maniac  of  psychology  and  a  passionate 
lover  of  analysis."  But  if  he  has  been  a  moralist,  he 
set  up  in  none  of  his  early  novels  any  claim  to  be 
a  reformer.  His  diagnosis  was  always  brilliant,  but 
he  offered  no  balm  for  the  wound  he  probed,  Thus 
his  criticism  showed  the  blight  that  Renan  and  the 
dilettante  skeptics  cast  on  all  who  fell  under  their 
shadow.  His  fiction  bears  first  strong,  then  feebler 

£crivains  d'aujourd'hui ;  France,  La  Vie  litteraire,  i.  348 ;  Pellissier, 
Essais  de  litterature  contemporaine,  221  ;  Deschamps,  La  Vie  et  les 
livres,  61  ;  Revue  bleue,  June,  1894,  and  March,  1895. 


496  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

marks  of  Kenan's  influence.  An  English  reviewer  has 
called  it  "  a  seductive  if  somewhat  sickly  product  of 
the  hot-house  of  an  outworn  civilization."  It  unites 
intellectual  keenness  with  a  morbid  sensitiveness  and 
an  imagination  that  loves  to  twine  itself  in  the  rosy 
bonds  of  "  Les  Liaisons  dangereuses."  La  Clos,  as 
Doumic  says,  is  Bourget's  breviary.  His  work  deals 
almost  exclusively  with  high-life,  chiefly  of  Paris,  but 
also  of  those  cosmopolitan  types  that  he  studied  in 
visits  to  Italy,  England,  and  America.  At  first  there 
was  certainly  no  small  dose  of  snobbishness  in  the 
delight  with  which  he  gloated  over  the  details  of  lux- 
ury, over  silk  stockings,  wondrous  in  woof  and  shade, 
and  the  various  patterns  of  a  corsage.  But  he  soon 
grew  aware  of  this  error  of  taste,  and  in  the  "Psy- 
chology of  Modern  Love"  more  than  once  made  fun 
of  his  former  work ;  but  possibly  the  Uagueur  was  less 
sincere  than  the  snob.  "  Mensonges "  marks  a  car- 
dinal point  in  his  fiction.  Up  to  that  time  he  had 
seen  environment  more  clearly  than  characters;  here 
the  interest  shifts  to  morbid  psycho-pathology,  and 
from  this  point  on  his  characters  become  more  and 
more,  like  Stendhal's,  "different"  from  normal  clay. 
Bourget  wishes  to  satisfy  Taine's  demand,  to  make  the 
novel  a  document  of  moral  history ;  but  like  him 
he  finds  the  abnormal  most  significant.  This,  however, 
is  true  for  fiction  only  so  long  as  the  characters  retain 
an  independent  will.  Men  such  as  Larcher  and  Ney- 
rac  l  are  wearisome  to  any  but  an  alienist. 

In  their  ethics  the  novels  of  Bourget's  second 
period  are  pessimistic.  The  triumph  is  with  cynical 
selfishness.  Common-sense  morality  does,  indeed, 

1  Larcher  in  "  Mensonges "  and  "  Psychologic  de  1'amour  mo- 
derne;  "  Neyrac  in  "  La  Terre  promise." 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE  WANING   OF   NATURALISM.     497 

occasionally  find  a  voice  in  this  psychological  wilder- 
ness, as  when  in  "  Mensonges  "  Madame  Moraines  with 
her  "  lover  for  money,  her  lover  for  love,  and  her  lover 
for  show,"  having  been  described  by  the  future  psy- 
chologist of  modern  love  as  "a  complicated  sort  of 
animal,"  the  Abbe*  answers :  "  Complicated  !  She  is 
just  a  wretch  who  lives  at  the  mercy  of  her  sensations. 
All  that  —  it 's  just  dirt."  And  lest  we  should  mis- 
apprehend the  lesson  we  are  given  a  glimpse  of  how 
it  all  came  out  in  "  Modern  Love."  The  lady  has 
changed  lovers  but  not  manners,  the  lover  is  resigned 
to  his  bonds,  and  Monsieur  qui  paye  is  enjoying  a  green 
old  age,  frosty  but  kindly,  the  friend  of  everybody. 
Maupassant's  pessimism  had  been  deeper,  more  sombre 
and  earnest.  This  has  a  false  note  of  flippant  cyni- 
cism that  prepares  the  reader  for  the  alleged  conversion 
announced  in  "  Cosmopolis,"  and  continued  through 
"Une  Idylle  tragique "  and  "  L'Etape,"  to  "Un  Di- 
vorce "  and  "  L'J^migre*."  Here  Bourget  has  fallen  in  with 
the  wave  of  popular  reaction  toward  religious  sentiments 
and  curiosity,  if  not  precisely  toward  Christian  creeds, 
that  came  to  France  from  the  Eussians,  and  showed 
itself  in  Daudet's  "  Petite  paroisse,"  as  well  as  in  the  fic- 
tion of  the  "  Revue  des  deux  mondes  "  under  Brunetiere  ; 1 
but  there  is  always  a  false  note  in  Bourget's  Catholicism, 
a  savor  of  the  senuous  mysticism  of  Baudelaire. 

Intent  as  Bourget  always  seems  on  catching  and 
conveying  "states  of  soul,"  his  style  is  apt  to  reflect 
the  quality  of  its  subject.  It  is  extremely  uneven, 
now  simple,  now  mannered  to  the  verge  of  affectation, 
sinking  at  times  to  careless  solecisms,  but  capable  of 
rising,  on  occasion,  to  a  terse  and  nervous  concision 

1  See  his  pamphlet  "  La  Science  et  la  religion  "  (1895). 
32 


498  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

that  unites  in  singular  measure  strength  and  beauty.1 
In  this,  as  in  much  else,  he  stands  in  close  relation  to 
his  literary  godchild  Barres,  at  the  protracted  birth  of 
whose  reputation  Bourget  actively  assisted. 

Maurice  Barres2  represents  a  movement  among  the 
literary  pessimists  to  throw  off  the  moral  lethargy 
of  Eenanism.  That  his  effort  was  a  partial  failure 
does  not  detract  from  its  significance,  and  it  has  not 
been  without  influence  on  the  considerable  section  of 
"  Young  France "  that  is  deaf  to  the  voice  of  the  Neo- 
Christian  altruists.  For,  with  a  desire  not  uncommon 
in  the  decade  of  the  80's,  to  find  a  new  path  and 
invent  a  new  shibboleth,  he  proclaimed  his  "  cultus 
of  the  ego,"  the  doctrine  of  individualism,  which,  he 
tells  us  in  the  preface  to  "  Berenice's  Garden,"  we 
must  guard  from  philistine  intrusion,  recreate  daily, 
and  direct  in  harmony  with  the  universe.  Is  Barres 
in  earnest  or  is  he  mocking  when  he  calls  these  early 
novels  "  spiritual  memoirs,"  and  asks  "  why  a  genera- 
tion disgusted  with  much,  perhaps  with  everything 
except  toying  with  ideas,  should  not  try  metaphysical 
romances  "  ?  Surely  charity  bids  us  take  him  for  a 
laughing  philosopher  when  he  brings  his  fair  promises 
to  the  lame  conclusion  that  to  expand  with  sincerity 
souls  must  have  leisure,  and  hence  that  the  pursuit  of 
wealth  is  for  the  present  the  suitable  attitude  for 
"  spirits  careful  of  the  inner  life."  Later  political 

1  Cp.  Lemaitre,  1.  c.  p.  339. 

2  Born  1862.     Journalist  since  1883.    Essays  :  Sensations  de  Paris, 
1888;  Le  Quartier  Latin,   1888;   Huit  jours  chez    M.    Kenan,    1888- 
Fiction:  Sous  1'ceil  des  barbares,  1888;  Un  Homme  libre,  1889;  Le 
Jardin  de   Berenice,   1890;   Le   Roman   de  1'energie  nationale ;    Les 
De'racines,  1897  ;  L'Appel  au  soldat,  1900 ;  Leurs  figures,  1902  ;    Collette 
Baudoche,  1908.     Drama:  Une  Journe'e  parlementaire,  1894.     Criti- 
cism :  Huneker,  Egoists,  pp.  207-235. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE   WANING  OF  NATURALISM.     499 

experience  gave  him  greater  earnestness,  and  in  the 
series  "  Le  Eoman  de  1'dnergie  nationale  "  he  has  done 
his  part  to  aid  social  reform  iu  France. 

Beginning  their  literary  career  under  Naturalistic 
influences,  from  which  they  soon  emancipated  them- 
selves, are  the  Boex  brothers,  who  under  the  name  J.  H. 
Eosny  have  written  forceful  studies  of  manners  inspired 
by  social  and  humanitarian  interests.1  Here,  too,  may 
be  named  the  Swiss  Kod,  a  sober  moralist,  remarkable 
for  the  subtle  analysis  and  delicate  feeling  of  his  studies 
of  conscience,  as  may  be  well  seen  in  "  Le  Manage  du 
Pasteur  Naudie*."  There  is  fine  irony  expressed  in  a 
style  of  remarkably  lucid  precision  in  the  fiction  of 
Anatole  France  (p.  301)  and  in  "  L' Armature  "  and  other 
novels  of  Paul  Hervieu  before  he  turned  to  the  drama. 
Noteworthy  too  are  A.  Hermant's  "Memoirs  pour  servir 
a  Thistoire  de  la  socie*teY'  a  series  of  novels  among  which 
"  Les  Grand  bourgeois  "  and  "  La  Discorde  "  are  typical. 
In  gentler  vein  are  the  stories  of  Madame  Bentzon  2  and 
Pierre  de  Coulevain,3  and  in  the  novels  of  Een4  Bazin  4 
the  religious  controversies  of  recent  years  find  an  echo. 
Notable,  too,  are  Le*on  Cladel's  somber  and  often  tragic 
stories  of  rural  life,  such  as  "  Le  Bouscassi4  "  and  the 
more  idyllic  pastorals  of  Pouvillon.5  ]£douard  Estau- 
nie"'s  "  La  Vie  Secrete  "  (1908)  revealed  a  hitherto  un- 
suspected power  and  Jean  Aicard  has  created  a  new 
Tartarin  in  his  "  Maurin  des  Maures,"  (1 908).  But 
the  strongest  work  and  the  best  promise  of  recent  years 

1  E.  g.  Marc  Fane  ;  Le  Termite  ;  Daniel  Valgraive. 

2  Un  Divorce,  1871 ;  Emancipee,  1887  ;  Constance,  1891 ;  Tchelovec, 
1900,  are  typical. 

8  Au  Cceur  de  la  vie,  1909. 

4  Les  Oberle,  1901  ;  Donatienne,  1903  ;  L'Isolee,  1905  ;  Le  Ble  quo 
leve,  1907  ;  Le  Mariage  de  Mile.  Gimel,  1909,  are  typical. 

5  E.  g.  Cesette,  Les  Antibel  and  Petites  ames  (short  stories). 


500  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

is  to  be  found  in  the  fiction  of  Marcel  Pre*vost  and  Paul 
Margueritte. 

Marcel  Provost1  seemed  at  first  the  most  hopeful 
pupil  of  Bourget,  but  soon  proved  his  chief  rival, 
making  shrewd  use  of  the  psychologist  camaraderie, 
but  freeing  himself  speedily  from  the  trammels  of 
literary  coteries  and  theories,  at  first  bent  rather  on 
following,  then  on  guiding,  the  currents  of  intellectual 
life.  So  when  in  "Conchette"  he  urged  the  claims 
of  Komanticism,  asserting  that  "  the  positive  and  the 
Eomantic  novel  were  only  two  expressions  of  the  same 
reality,"  he  was  no  prophet  crying  in  the  Naturalistic 
wilderness  as  he  would  have  been  ten  years  earlier, 
but  rather  a  sagacious  prognosticator  of  a  popular 
favor,  already  weary  alike  of  aristocratic  "states  of 
soul"  and  plebeian  states  of  life.  He  was  not  dis- 
posed, however,  to  sacrifice  his  growing  popularity  to 
this,  or  indeed  to  any  literary  theory,  proposing  to 
himself  for  the  present  no  higher  aim  than  to  amuse 
the  public  and  himself,2  and  to  this  he  has  remained 
faithful,  posing  no  longer  as  a  moralist,3  but  rather  as 
a  keen  llagueur  of  society,  an  amateur  collector  of  the 
distortions  of  love.  All  his  books  before  1900  show  a 
standing  contrast  between  the  man  in  whom  love 

1  Born   1862.      Fiction:    Le    Scorpion,    1887;    Conchette,   1 888 ; 
Mile.   Jaufre,   1889;  La  Cousine   Laure,    1890;  La  Confession  d'un 
amant,  1891 ;  Lettres  des  femmes,  1892 ;  Nouvelles  lettres  des  femmes, 
1893;  L'Automne  d'une  femme,  1893;  Demi-vierges,  1894;  Le  Jardin 
secret,  1897  ;  Les  Vierges  fortes,  1900;  Lettres  &  Francoise,  1902;  La 
Princesse   d'Erminge,   1905;    M.  et  Mme.   Moloch,    1906;    Lettres  a 
Francoise  Mariee  (1908).     Drama:  La  Plus  faible,  1904.     Criticism: 
Bertaut,  Marcel  Pre'vost,  1904. 

2  Preface  to  "  Cousine  Laure." 

8  In  "  Demi-vierges  "  he  does  indeed  pose  as  a  moralist  once  more, 
but  it  is  as  a  moralist  pour  rire. 


MODERN   FICTION.  —  THE  WANING  OF   NATURALISM.      501 

becomes  a  senile  weakness  and  him  in  whom  it  re- 
mains a  physical  function.  Amadou,  Louiset,  Maxime 
de  Chantel,  Fre'de'ric,  are  dragged  down  by  it  mor- 
ally and  intellectually.  Moriceau,  Claeys,  Hector  Le 
Tessier,  O'Kent,  cynics  all,  are  suggested  for  admira- 
tion and  imitation ;  and  the  last  of  these  sums  up  the 
new  world-wisdom  in  the  dictum  that  "love  has  no 
intrinsic  morality,  is  neither  noble  nor  shameful,  but 
purely  selfish." 

The  interest  of  Provost's  work  lies  almost  wholly  in 
analysis  of  the  feminine  mind,  and  finds  its  extreme 
flowering  in  the  "  Lettres  des  femraes"  and  in  "Demi- 
vierges."  He  is  always  clever  in  conception,  skilful 
in  construction.  His  style  is  easy  and  flowing,  but 
yet  characterized  by  a  singular  combination  of  simple 
sentiment  and  graceful  delicacy  with  astonishing  tours 
deforce  in  brutality  of  expression.  There  is  a  ten- 
dency to  redundancy  and  repetition,  and.  as  in  so 
many  men  of  talent  in  this  generation,  there  is  occa- 
sionally an  undeniable  slovenliness  of  diction,  probably 
the  result  of  over-hasty  production.  There  are  graver 
faults  than  these,  however.  The  brilliancy  of  his  an- 
alysis often  masks  faulty  assumptions ;  his  characters 
act  from  strained  or  insufficient  motives;  his  women 
are  too  neuropathic  to  rouse  a  sympathetic  interest. 
They  are  too  irresponsible,  too  much  the  creatures  of 
their  emotional  instincts,  the  instruments  of  nature, 
without  discipline  or  morality.  With  the  turn  of 
the  century,  however,  his  work  underwent  a  great 
change.  It  became  more  earnest,  more  sincere  in  its 
ethics,  more  purposeful,  too,  as  he  began  to  interest 
himself  in  social  reform,  especially  as  it  affected  the 
position  of  women  in  France.  This  may  be  seen  es- 
pecially in  "Lettres  k  FranQoise"  and  the  "Lettres  & 


502  MODERN   FRENCH   LITERATURE. 

Frangoise  Marine,"  though  M.  et  Mme.  Moloch  showed 
that  it  might  not  prove  a  sustained  flight. 

For  Paul  Margueritte l  the  prognostic  may  be  more 
confident.  He  had,  indeed,  a  less  promising  literary 
birth,  but  a  much  more  healthy  development.  His 
early  work  was  naturalistic  a  outrance.  No  writer  of 
that  school  has  been  more  minute  than  he  in  observa- 
tion and  description  of  the  details  of  every-day  actions. 
At  first  he  sometimes  abused  this  talent,  descending 
to  Rabelaisian  details  and  episodes  of  Saphism  that  go 
about  as  far  in  the  analysis  of  dirt  as  it  is  granted  to 
any  writer  to  penetrate  who  does  not  leave  his  aesthetic 
sense  behind.  His  early  work  shows  also  a  disposition 
to  introspective  revery ;  but  in  later  books  these  tend- 
encies are  restrained  by  a  riper  mind  and  clarified  by 
a  cleaner  taste,  and  his  art  is  dignified  by  a  higher 
purpose  and  a  deeper  sense  of  the  responsibilities  of 
literature  to  morals. 

With  this  growing  seriousness  his  work  becomes 
more  attractive,  but  his  style  continues  restless,  ner- 
vous, uneven.  It  proceeds  by  fits  and  starts,  suggests 
the  eager  searcher  rather  than  the  confident  guide, 
though  it  flashes  often  with  penetrating  observations. 
Margueritte  feels  profoundly  the  unsolved  enigmas  of 

1  Born  1860.  Son  of  the  general  whose  heroic  death  at  Sedan  is 
commemorated  in  Zola's  "Debacle."  Fiction:  Mon  pere,  1884;  Tons 
quatre,  1885;  La  Confession  posthume,  1886;  Maison  ouverte,  1887; 
Pascal  Gafosse,  1889;  Jours  d'epreuve,  1889;  Amants,  1890;  La 
Force  des  choses,  1891;  Sur  le  retour,  Le  Cuirassier  blanc,  1892; 
Ma  grande,  1893;  La  Tounneute,  1894;  Fors  1'honneur,  1895;  Simple 
histoire  (Nouvelles),  1895  ;  L'Essor,  1906;  Le  Desastre,  1908;  Femmes 
nouvelles,  1899 ;  Les  Troncons  du  glaive,  1900;  Les  Braves  gens,  1901 ; 
Le  Jardin  du  roi,  1902;  Les  Deux  vies,  1902;  La  Commune,  1904; 
Le  Prisme,  1905. 

Criticism :  Pellissier,  Litterature  contemporaine :  Lemaitre,  Con- 
temporaiiis,  v.  30. 


MODERN    FICTION. — THE   WANING   OF   NATURALISM.      503 

life,  but  he  has  come  to  reject  the  sedative  of  pessi- 
mism. Haunted,  as  he  tells  us,  by  a  sentiment  of  mys- 
tery from  childhood,  he  was  one  of  the  first  to  suspend 
judgment.  He  balanced  for  a  time  between  an  instinc- 
tive assertion  of  the  will  that  characterizes  all  healthy 
youth,  and  a  morbid  doubt  of  the  worth  of  freedom  due 
to  his  determinist  environment  that  made  him  question 
at  times  whether  we  were  not  "  involuntary  actors  and 
powerless  witnesses  of  the  slow  indefinable  evolution  of 
ourselves."  *  But  at  his  best  and  at  last  he  has  had  the 
courage  to  proclaim  that  no  one  has  a  right  "  to  leave  a 
great  responsibility  to  chance  or  destiny,"  that  "the 
greatest  misfortunes  come  from  lack  of  will ; "  2  and  in 
those  words  he  has  found  the  disease  and  shown  the 
remedy  for  the  neuropathic  culture  of  modern  France. 

It  is  inspiriting  to  see  this  son  of  one  who  won 
renown  by  a  glorious  death  at  Sedan,  enfranchising 
himself  by  the  power  of  his  own  genius  from  mental 
anaemia  and  moral  lethargy.  His  "Pascal  Gavosse" 
ends  with  a  call  to  work.  "  Jours  d'e*preuve  "  in  its 
study  of  the  humbler  aspects  of  bourgeois  life  has  laid 
aside  Flaubert's  contempt  for  Dickens'  sympathy  with 
that  "  lowly  happiness,  narrow  and  resigned  but  sure/' 
despite  poverty  and  disappointed  ambition.  "  La  Force 
des  choses  "  is  even  more  tonic  in  its  healthy  morality, 
and  if  in  "  Sur  le  retour "  he  returned  for  a  time  to  a 
more  artificial  psychology  and  tried  to  throw  a  new 
light  on  the  old  observation  that  "crabbed  age  and 
youth  cannot  live  together,"  he  recovered  his  healthier 
tone  in  "Ma  grande,"  a  sound,  clean  story  of  loving 
jealousy  in  which  he  has  involved  a  delightful  parody 
of  the  Symbolists.  This  same  strong,  hopeful  note 

1  Alger  I'hiver,  1891. 

2  "  Force  des  choses  "  and  "  Jours  d'epreuve." 


504  MODERN   FRENCH  LITERATURE. 

rings  through  "  Fors  1'honneur,"  and  is  the  inspiration  of 
"  L'Essor  "  and  of  the  series  of  patriotic  novels  in  col- 
laboration with  his  brother  Victor,  begun  with  "  Le 
De*sastre "  and  continued  in  "  Les  Trongons  du  glaive," 
"  Les  Braves  gens,"  and  "  La  Commune,"  all  stories  of 
the  Terrible  Year,  1870-1871.  Meantime  the  brothers 
had  written  "Le  Jardin  du  roi,"  a  charming  idyl  of 
Versailles,  and  were  beginning  to  engage  in  the  struggle 
for  the  further  emancipation  of  women  in  the  novels 
"  Femrnes  nouvelles,"  "  Les  Deux  vies,"  and  "  Le 
Prisme,"  as  well  as  in  pamphlet  discussions  of  social 
subjects.  The  recent  work  of  these  sons  of  the  hero 
of  Sedan,  purposeful,  sane,  and  patriotic,  suggests  the 
evolution  from  the  present  novelistic  chaos  of  a  new, 
profounder,  and  purified  realism. 


INDEX. 


EMBRACING  authors,  with  the  dates  of  birth  and  death  and  the  titles  of  the 
more  important  works.  The  article  and  its  compounds  are  treated  as  integral 
parts  of  names,  but  not  of  titles.  The  preposition  de  is  neglected  in  both  cases. 


ABB£  TIGBANE  (Fabre),  420. 
Adam  de  la  Halle.     See  La  Halle. 
Aicaird,  J.  (1848-          ),  499. 
Alembert,  D'  (1717-1783),  104. 
Alexander,  Legends  of,  4. 
Alexandrine  verse,  4,  15,  26,  79,  101. 
Alexis,  P.  (1851-1901),  457. 
Allemagne  (De  Stael),  129-134. 
Amadis  of  Gaul,  23. 
Amoureuses  (Daudet),  470,  476. 
Amyot,  J.  (1513-1593),  23. 
Angelo  (Hugo),  215. 
Annee  terrible  (Hugo),  230,  244. 
Antoine  de  la  Salle.    See  La  Salle. 
Armance  (Stendhal),  410. 
Art  d'etre  grand-pere  (Hugo),  247. 
Arthur,  Legends  of,  3. 
Assommoir  (Zola),  451,  456,  472. 
Atala  (Chateaubriand),  138,  142. 
Aubigne-,  A.  d'  (1551-1630),  26. 
Augier,  t.  (1820-1889),  98,  99,  281, 
356-369,  372,  388,  423. 

BAIF,  J.-A.  (1532-1589),  26. 

Balzac,  H.  de  (1799-1850),  108,  170, 

191,  396,  404, 405, 411,  413,  414-427, 

432,  443. 

Balzac,  J.  de  (1594-1654),  57,  81. 
Banville,  T.  de  (1820-1891),  275,  304- 

309,  392. 
Barante,  A.-G.-P.  de  (1782-1866),  267, 

272. 

Barbes,  A.  (1809-1870),  402. 
Barbier,  H.-A.  (1805-1882),  173. 
Barnave,  A.-P.  (1761-1793),  103. 
Barres,  M.  (1862-        ),  498-499. 


Barthe'lemy,  J.-J.  (1716-1795),  107. 
Baudelaire,  C.  de   (1821-1867),  275, 

309,  332-342,  457,  459,  497. 
Bayle,  P.  (1647-1706),  62. 
Bazin,  R.  (1853-        ),  499. 
Beaumarchais,  P.-A.  de  (1732-1799), 

90,  98-99. 

Becque,  H.  (1837-1899),  394. 
Bellay,  J.  du.     See  Du  Bellay. 
Belleau,  R.  (1528-1577),  26. 
Bentzon,    Th.    (Mme.  Blanc,    1840- 

1897),  499. 
Beranger,  J.-P.  de  (1780-1857),  158- 

159. 

Bernardin.    See  Saint-Pierre. 
Beroald.     See  Verville. 
Bestiaries,  4. 
Beyle,  H.  (Stendhal,  1783-1842),  174, 

191,    396,  404,  405-414,  423,  427, 

430. 

Blanc,  L.  (1811-1882),  271. 
Boileau,  N.  (1636-1711),  48-50,  72. 
Bossuet,  J.-B.  (1627-1704),  62. 
Bouchor,  M.  (1855-        ),  318. 
Boule  de  suif  (Maupassant),  458. 
Bourdaloue,  L.  (1632-1704),  62. 
Bourget,  P.  (1852-        ),  396, 407,  409, 

414,  494-498. 

Bouvard  et  Pe"cuchet  (Flaubert),  437. 
Brantome,  P.  de  (1540-1614),  39. 
Brunetiere,  F.  (1849-1906),  273,  299- 

300,  497. 

Buffon,  J.-L.  (1707-1788),  105. 
Bug-Jargal  (Hugo),  196-197. 
Burgraves  (Hugo),  218-219. 
Bussy-Rabutin,  R.  de  (1618-1704),  60. 


506 


INDEX. 


CALVIN,  J.  (1509-1564),  32. 

Camus,  J.-P.  (1582-1653),  55. 

Carmen  (Merimee),  429. 

Cdard,  H.  (1851-        ),  457. 

Cent  nouvelles  nouvelles  (La  Salle), 

17. 

Chamfort,  S.-R.-N.  (1741-1794),  60. 
Chanson  de  Roland,  2. 
Chansons  de  geste,  3. 
Chansons  des  rues  et  des  bois  (Hugo), 

243. 

Chants  du  cre'puscule  (Hugo),  243. 
Chartreuse  de  Panne  (Stendhal),  412. 
Chasseur  vert  (Stendhal),  412. 
Chateaubriand,  R.  de  (1768-1848),  119, 

135-151,  157,  266,  406,  493. 
Chatimente  (Hugo),  228,  230,  237-241. 
Chatrian,  A.  (1826-1890)  463. 
Chewier,    A.-M.    de  (1762-1794),   93, 

107. 
Cherbuliez,  V.  (1832-1899),  465-466, 

491. 

Chrestien  of  Troyes  (about  1195),  4. 
Cladel,  L.  (1835-        ),  499. 
Colomba  (Merime'e),  429. 
Colonel  Chabert  (Balzac),  421. 
Comddie  larmoyante,  97. 
Commynes,  P.  de  (1445-1511),  16,  31. 
Comte,  A.  (1795-1857),  265,  281. 
Condillac,  E.  de(  1715-1780),  104,  408. 
Constant,   B.  (1767-1830),    124,    153, 

396. 

Contemplations  (Hugo),  241. 
Contes  drolatiques  (Balzac),  423. 
Copped,  F.  (1843-1908),  321-324,  392, 

462. 

Corinne  (De  Stael),  128-129. 
Corneille,  P.  (1606-1684),  65-71,  72, 

89. 

Cosmopolis  (Bourget),  497. 
Coulevain,  P.  de  (Pseud.),  499. 
Cousin,  V.  (1792-1867),  265,  281. 
Cousine  Bette  (Balzac),  421. 
Crebillon,  C.  P.  de  (jls,  1707-1777), 

107,  110. 

Crebillon,  P.  de  (pere,  1674-1762),  94. 
Cr&nieux,  H.  (1828-        ),  390. 
Cromwell  (Hugo),  202-204. 
Cure*  de  Tours  (Balzac),  420. 
Cure-e  (Zola),  451. 


DAME  aux  came'lias  (Dumas),   358, 

362,  370-372,  421. 
Dancourt,  F.-C.  (1661-1725),  96. 
Danton,  G.-J.  (1759-1794),  103. 
Daudet,  A.  (1840-1897),  392, 462,  464, 

467-490. 

Daurat,  J.  (d.  1588),  26. 
Debacle  (Zola),  454. 
Delille,  J.  (1738-1813),  92. 
D^roulede,  P.  (1846-        ),  352. 
De"saugiers,  M.-A.  (1772-1827),  92. 
Descartes,  R.  (1596-1650),  57. 
Deschamps,  A.  (1809-1869),  156. 
Deschamps,  E.  (1791-1871),  156. 
Desfontaines,  G.-F.  (1733-1825),  86. 
Des  Periers,  B.  (d.  ab.  1544),  38. 
Desportes,  P.  (1546-1606),  28. 
Destouches,  P.  (1680-1754),  96,  98. 
Diderot,  D.  (1713-1784),  95, 104,  106, 

107,  108,  112. 

Dorat,  C.^T.  (1714-1789),  92. 
Drama,  Early,  7,  13-15. 
Droz,  G.  (1832-1895),  463. 
Du  Bellay,  J.  (1524-1560),  26. 
Duchesse  de  Langleais  (Balzac),  421. 
Ducis,  J.-F.  (1733-1816),  95. 
Dudevant,    A.   (George   Sand,   1804- 

1876),  191,  392,  396,  397-405. 
Du  Laurens,  H.-J.  (1719-1797),  107. 
Dumas,  A.  (fils,  1824-1895),  98,  281, 

358,  362,  369-379,  403. 
Dumas,  A.   (pere,  1803-1870),    100, 

157,  176-178,  187-191,  405. 
D'Urf(§.    SeeUrfe. 

EDUCATION  sentimentale  (Flaubert), 

438. 

Encyclopddie,  104. 

fipisode  sous  le  terreur  (Balzac),  422. 
Erckmann,  E.  (1822-1899),  463. 
Esmeralda  (Hugo),  216. 
Estaunie,  E.  (1862-          )  499. 
Estienne,  H.  (1528-1598),  39. 
Eugenie  Grandet  (Balzac),  419. 
Evangelists  (Daudet),  482-483. 

FABLIAUX,  5,  93. 
Fabre,  F.  (1830-1898),  466. 
Faguet,  E.  (1847-        ),  299. 
Fenelon,  F.  (1651-1715),  62. 


INDEX. 


507 


Ferragus  (Balzac),  421. 

Feuilles  d'automne  (Hugo),  221-222. 

Feuillet,  0.  (1821-1892),  392,  464-465, 

491. 

Feval,  P.  (1817-1887),  380. 
Fin  de  Satan  (Hugo),  255. 
Flaubert,  G.  (1821-1880),  281,  403, 

433-440,  448. 

Fle"chier,  E.  (1632-1710),  62. 
Florian,  J^P.  (1755-1794),  107. 
France,  A.     See  Thibaut. 
Freron,  E.-C.  (1718-1776),  86. 
Froissart,  J.  (1337-1410),  15. 
Fromentin,  E.  (1820-1876),  463. 
Fromont  jeune  et  Risler  aine*  (Daudet), 

472,  476. 
Furetiere,  A.  (1620-1688),  56. 

GABORIAU,  E.  (1835-1873),  463. 

Gautier,  T.  (1811-1872),  155,  157, 
^169-173,  184-186,  .191, 281,  304,  318, 
459. 

Ge*nie  du  christianisme  (Chateau- 
briand), 139,  143-145. 

Gentil-Bernard,  P.-J.  (1710-1775),  92. 

Germinal  (Zola),  453,  455. 

Germinie  Lacerteux  (Goncourt),  441- 
442,  443. 

Gesta  Romanorura,  6. 

Ghil,  R.  (1862-        ),  350. 

Gobseck  (Balzac),  421. 

Gomberville,  M.  de  (1600-1674),  55. 

Goncourt,  E.  (1822-1896),  and  J.  (1830- 
1870),  281,  394,  440-445,  490. 

Grail  saga,  4. 

Gregh,  F.  (1873-        ),  353. 

Gresset,  J.-B.  (1709-1777),  91. 

Grdville,  H.  (1842-1876),  463. 

Grimm,  F.-M.  (1723-1807),  106. 

Guizot,  F.-P.  (1787-1874),  266,  271. 

Guzla  (Mdrimee),  428. 

Gyp.    See  Mirabeau,  S.-G.-M.-A.  de. 

HALI£VY,  L.  (1834-1908),  390-391, 462. 
Hamilton,  A.  (1646-1720),  57. 
Han  d'Islande  (Hugo),  200-201. 
Hardy,  A.  (1560-1631),  31,  63-64. 
Helv^tius,  C.-A.  (1715-1771),  104,  408. 
Herinique,  L.  (1851-        ),  394,  457. 
Heptam^ron  (Marguerite),  38. 


Heredia,  J.  de  (1842-1905),  318-321. 
Hermant,  A.  (1862-        ),  499. 
Hernani  (Hugo),   154,  155,  206-210, 

371. 

Heroet,  A.  (d.  1568),  28. 
Hervieu,  P.  (1857-        ),  395,  499. 
Holbach,  P.  d'  (1723-1789),  104. 
Homme  qui  rit  (Hugo),  235-236. 
Hugo,  V.  (1802-1885),  100,  154,  156, 

173,  174, 191, 192-264,  281,  303,  402, 

434. 
Huysmans,  J.-K.  (1848-1907),  457. 

ILLUSIONS  perdues  (Balzac),  420. 
Immortel  (Daudet),  484-485. 
Itine'raire  de  Paris  a  Jerusalem  (Cha- 
teaubriand), 140, 148. 

JACK  (Daudet),  476. 

Jean  of  Meung  (1280-1318),  8-9. 

Jean  of  Troyes  (d.  after  1483),  16. 

Je"sus  Christ  en  Flandre  (Balzac),  423. 

Jodelle,  E.  (1532-1573),  26,  31. 

Joinville,  J.  de  (1224-131?),  10. 

Juif  errant  (Sue),  420. 

Juvenal  des  Ursins  (1388-1473),  16. 

LABICHE,!  E.-M.    (1815-1888),    281, 

387-390. 
La  Bretonne,  R.  de  (1734-1806),  107, 

110,  449. 

La  Bruyere,  J.  de  (1645-1695),  61. 
La  Calprenede,  G.  de  (1610-1663),  55. 
La  Chaussee,  P.-C.  de   (1692-1754), 

95,  98. 
La  Clos,  P.-A.-F.  de  (1741-1803),  106, 

110,  496. 

Lafayette,  Madame  de  (1634-1693),  56. 
La  Fontaine,  J.  de  (1621-1695),  50-54. 
La  Halle,  Adam  de  (about  1286),  7. 
La  Harpe,  J.-F.  de  (1739-1803),  106. 
Labor,  J.  (1840-        ),  318. 
Lamartine,   A.   de   (1790-1869),   156, 

159-162,  280. 

Lamennais,  R.  (1782-1854),  401. 
La  Mettrie,  J.  de  (1709-1751),  107. 
Lamotte,  A.  de  (1672-1731),  94,  98. 
Lanson,  G.  (1857-        ),  299. 
La  Rochefoucauld,  F.  de  (1613-1693), 

58-60. 


508 


INDEX. 


La  Salle,  A.  de  (1398-1461),  16-17. 
Lavedan,  H.  de  (1859-        ),  462,  491. 
Ledru-Rollin,  A.  (1807-1874),  402. 
Lefranc,  P.-C.  (1814-1878),  388. 
L^gende  des  siecles  (Hugo),  248-253. 
Le  Maire  de  Beiges  (1473-1548),  28. 
Lemaitre,    J.    (1853-         ),    300-301, 

395. 

Lemercier,  L.-J.-N.  (1771-1840),  174. 
Leroux,  P.  (1797-1871),  402. 
Le   Sage,   A.-R.   (1668-1747),   95-96, 

107-109. 

Lettres  de  mon  moulin  (Daudet),  470. 
Lisle,  Leconte  de   (1820-1894),   309- 

318. 

Lisle,  Rouget  de  (1760-1836),  92. 
Loris,  Guillaume  de  (ab.  1260),  8-9. 
Loti.     See  Viaud. 
Louis  Lambert  (Balzac),  420,  422. 
Louvet,  J.-B.  (1760-1797),  106,  110. 
Lucrece  Borgia  (Hugo),  214. 

MABLY,  G.  de  (1709-1785),  103. 
Madame  Bovary  (Flaubert),  436,  437, 

440,  445,  465. 
Madame  Chrysan  theme  (Viaud-Loti), 

494. 

Maeterlinck,  M.  (1864-        ),  395. 
Mairet,  J.  (1604-1686),  64. 
Maitre  Pathelin,  14. 
Malebranche,  N.  de  (1638-1715),  62. 
Malherbe,  N.  de  (1555-1628),  28,  43- 

47,  81. 

Mallarme",  S.  (1842-1898),  350. 
Malot,  H.  (1830-1907),  463. 
Manuel,  E.  (1823-        ),  321-322. 
Marguerite  of  Navarre  (1492-1549), 

25,  38. 
Margueritte,  P.  (1860-        ),  395,  502- 

504. 

Mariage  de  Loti  (Viaud-Loti),  493. 
Marie  of  France  (XIII.  cent.),  6. 
Marie  Tudor  (Hugo),  215. 
Marion  de   Lorme  (Hugo),  211-212, 

358,  359,  362,  372. 
Marivaux,  P.  de  (1688-1763),  96-98, 

107,  109. 

Marmontel,  J.-F.  (1723-1799),  107, 112. 
Marot,  C.  (1495-1544),  24-26,  93. 
Martin,  H.  (1810-1885),  265. 


Martyrs  (Chateaubriand),  140,  147. 
Massillon,  J.-B.  (1633-1742),  62. 
Maupassant,  G.  de  (1850-1892),  321, 

395,  396,  458-463,  497. 
Maupertuis,  P.-L.  de  (1698-1759),  88. 
Maynard,  F.  (1582-1646),  47. 
Meilhac,  H.  (1832-1897),  390-391. 
Mendes,  C.  (1841-1909),  463. 
Me'nippee  (Satire),  39. 
Mensonges  (Bourget),  496-497. 
Me'rime'e,  P.  (1803-1870^  157, 191,  396, 

413,  421,  427-431. 
Merrill,  S.  (1863-        ),  350. 
Michel,  M.  (1812-1868),  388. 
Michelet,  J.  (1798-1874),  267-271,  420. 
Mirabeau,  G.-H.  de  (1749-1791),  103, 

492. 
Mirabeau,  S.-G.-M.-A.  de  (Gyp,  185?- 

),  491-492. 
Miracle  Plays,  5. 
Mirbeau,  O.  (1850-        ),  395. 
Mise"  rabies  (Hugo),  228,  232-235. 
Moliere,  J.-B.-P.  de  (1622-1673),  75- 

80. 

Mon  frere  Ives  (Viaud-Loti),  493-494. 
Montaigne,  M.  de  (1513-1592),  39-42. 
Montesquieu,  C.  de  (1689-1755),  102, 

272. 

Moreas,  J.  (1856-  ),  350. 
Morice,  C.  (1861-  ),  302. 
Murger,  H.  (1822-1861),  463. 
Musset,  A.  de  (1810-1857),  157,  165- 

169,  179-181,  182-183,  280,  401. 
Musset,  P.  de  (1804-1880),  167,  401. 
Mystery  Plays,  5. 

NABAB  (Daudet),  468,  473,  477. 
Nerval,  G.  de  (1808-1855),  157,  187. 
Nicholas  of  Troyes  (about  1535),  38. 
Nisard,  D.  (1806-1888),  273. 
Nodier,  C.  (1780-1844),  156. 
Noel  of  Fail  (about  1547),  38. 
Notre-Dame  (Hugo),  220-221,  454. 
Numa  Roumestan  (Daudet),  473,  481- 
482. 

OHNET,  G.  (1848-        ),  392,  423, 490- 

491. 
Orleans,  C.  d»  (1391-1465),  12. 


INDEX. 


509 


Odes  (Hugo),  198-202,  204-205. 
Orientales  (Hugo),  205. 

PAILLERON,  E.  (1834-1899),  391. 
Palissot,  C.  (1730-1814),  372. 
Parents  pauvres  (Balzac),  420. 
Parny,  E.-D.  (1753-1814),  92. 
Pascal,  B.  (1623-1662),  57-58. 
Passion  dans  le  desert  (Balzac),  422. 
Pastourelles,  5,  7. 
Peau  de  chagrin  (Balzac),  422,  423. 
Pellissier,  G.  (1852-        ),  299. 
Pecheur  d'Islande  (Viaud-Loti),  493- 

494. 

Pere  Goriot  (Balzac),  420. 
Perrault,  C.  (1628-1703),  57. 
Petit  chose  (Daudet),  467. 
Petite  paroisse  (Daudet),  485,  497. 
Piron,  A.  (1689-1773),  91. 
Ponsard,  F.  (1814-1867),  280,  357. 
Pontus  de  Tyard  (1521-1605),  26. 
Port-Tarascon  (Daudet),  475. 
Pot-bouille  (Zola),  451,  456. 
Pouvillon,  E.  (1840-        ),  499. 
Provost,  A.-F.  (1697-1763),  106,  109- 

110,  372. 

Prevost,  M.  (1862-        ),  500-501. 
Psychologic     de     1' amour    moderne 

(Bourget),  496,  497. 

QUATRE  vents  de  1'esprit  (Hugo),  253- 

255. 
Quatre-vingt-treize  (Hugo),  230,  236- 

237. 
Quinet,  E.  (1803-1875),  172. 

RABELAIS,  F.  (1497-155?),  33-38,  93. 
Racan,  H.  de  (1589-1670).  47. 
Racine,  J.  (1639-1699),  58,  70,  71-75. 
Rambouillet,  Hotel,  61,  64,  67,  76. 
Raynal,  G.  (1713-1796),  103. 
Raynouard,  F.  (1761-1836),  154. 
Redoute  (Me'rime'e),  428. 
Recherche  de  1'absolu  (Balzac),  422. 
Regnard,  J.-F.  (1655-1709),  80. 
Re"gnier,  H.  de  (1864-        ),  350. 
Re"gnier,  M.  (1573-1613),  46. 
Re"musat,  C.  de  (1797-1875),  174. 
Renan,  E.  (1823-1892),  281,  288-299. 
Renard  the  Fox,  7. 


Rene"  (Chateaubriand),  140, 145-146. 
Rene"e  Mauperin  (Goncourt),  441. 
Restif  de  la  Bretonne.     See  La  Bre- 

tonne. 

Retz,  Cardinal  de  (1614-1679),  58. 
Reve  (Zola),  448. 
Reynaud,  J.  (1806-1863),  402. 
Ricard,  J.  (1848-        ),  499. 
Richepin,  J.  (1849-        ),  321. 
Rimbaud,  A.  (1854-        ),  351. 
Rivoire,  A.  (1872-        ),  313. 
Rochefort,  H.  de  (1830-        ),  229. 
Rod,  E.  (1857-        ),  299,  499. 
Roi  s'amuse  (Hugo),  112-114. 
Rois  en  exil  (Daudet),  479-480. 
Roland,  Chanson  de,J2,  3. 
Rollin,  C.  (1661-1741),  101. 
Roman  de  la  rose,  8. 
Roman  de  Rou,  3. 

Roman  d'un  Spahi  (Viaud-Loti),  493. 
Ronsard,  P.  de  (1524-1585),  26-31. 
Rose  et  Ninette  (Daudet),  485. 
Rosny,  J.-H.  (pseud,  of  J.  H.  Boex, 

1856-        ,  and  J.  Boex,  1859-        ), 

499. 

Rotrou,  J.  (1609-1650),  65. 
Rostand,  E.  (1868-        ),  395. 
Rouge  et  le  noir,  Le  (Stendhal),  411. 
Rouget  de  Lisle.    See  Lisle. 
Rousseau,  J.-B.  (1670-1741),  91. 
Rousseau,  J.-J.  (1712-1778),  98,  105, 

107,  113-118. 

Ruteboeuf  (d.  ab.  1286),  7. 
Ruy  Bias  (Hugo),  216-218. 

SADE,  Marquis  de  (1740-1814),  338. 
Saint-Amant,  G.  de  (1594-1661),  47. 
Sainte-Beuve,  C.-A.  (1804-1869),  156, 

274-278,  282,  304,  321. 
Saint-Gdlais,  M.  de  (1491-1558),  26. 
Saint-Pierre,  B.  de  (1737-1814),  110- 

111,  493. 

Saint-Simon,  L.  de  (1675-1755),  101. 
Salammbo  (Flaubert),  437,  438-439. 
Sand,  George.    See  Dudevant. 
Sandeau,  J.  (1811-1883),  359-360, 400. 
Sapho  (Daudet),  483-484. 
Sarcey,  F.  (1828-1899),  302,  388. 
Sardou,  V.  (1831-1908),  99,  379-387. 
Scarron,  P.  (1610-1660),  56. 


510 


INDEX. 


Sc£ve,  M.  (d.  ab.  1564),  28. 

Scribe,    A.-E.   (1791-1861),   354-356, 

386,  393. 

Scud^ry,  G.  (1601-1667),  55,  66. 
Scude'ry,  M.  (1607-1701),  55. 
Sedaine,  M.-J.  (1719-1797),  95. 
Seraphita  (Balzac),  422. 
Seven  Wise  Masters,  6. 
S^vigne,  Madame  de  (1626-1696),  60- 

61. 

Sorel,  C.  (1597-1674),  56. 
Soumet,  A.  (1788-1845),  197. 
Splendeurs  et  mis^res  des  courtesanes 

(Balzac),  420. 
Stael,  Madame  de  (1766-1817),  119- 

135,  151,  157,  272. 
Stendhal.     See  Beyle. 
Sue  (E.),  J.-M.  (1804-1859),  188,  269, 

402. 
Sully-Prudhomme,  R.-F.  (1839-1907), 

324-332. 

TAINE,  H.-A.  (1828-1892),  271,  278- 
288,  407,  443,  446,  448,  462. 

Tamango  (M£rim6e),  429. 

Tartarin  de  Tarascon  (Daudet),  473. 

Tartarin  sur  les  Alpes  (Daudet),  474. 

Tentation  de  St.  Antoine  (Flaubert), 
435,  439. 

Thdrese  Raquin  (Zola),  446. 

Theuriet,  A.  (1833-1907),  466,  491. 

Thibaut,  A.-F.  (Anatole  France,  1844- 
),  301-302. 

Thibaut  of  Champagne  (1201-1253),  6. 

Thierry,  A.  (1795-1856),  266. 

Thiers,  L.-A.  (1797-1877),  266. 

Tocqueville,  A.  de  (1805-1859),  266. 


Torquemada  (Hugo),  255. 
Tragedie  bourgeoise,  97. 
Travailleurs  de  la  mer  (Hugo),  235. 

URFE\  H.  d'  (1568-1625),  54. 

VACQUERIE,  A.  (1819-1895),  229. 

Vaugelas,  C.  de  (1585-1650),  61. 

Vergniaud,  P.-V.  (1753-1793),  103. 

Verlaine,  P.  ( 1 844-1896),  318, 321, 342- 
352. 

Verne,  J.  (1828-1875),  463. 

Verville,  B.  de  (1558-1612),  39. 

Viaud,  L.-M.  (Pierre  Loti,  1850-  ), 
492-494. 

Viele-Griffin,  F.  (1864-        ),  350. 

Vigny,  A.  de  (1799-1863),  156,  162- 
165,  174, 175, 178-179, 181-182,  280, 
304. 

Villehardouin,  G.  de  (1155-1213),  9-10. 

Villemain,  A.-F.  (1790-1867),  272-273. 

Villon,  F.  (1431-ab.  1484),  12-13,  93. 

Vinet,  A.  (1797-1847),  273. 

Vogii£,  M.  de  (1848-        ),  492. 

Voiture,  V.  (1598-1648),  47. 

Voix  intdrieures  (Hugo),  223-224. 

Voltaire,  F.-M.  Arouetde  (1694-1778), 
82-90,  406;  critic,  106;  historian, 
101-102,  272;  novelist,  111-112, 
466;  poet,  92-94,  108,  408;  philoso- 
pher, 103. 

WAGE,  R.  (XIII.  cent.),  3. 
William  Shakespeare  (Hugo),  228. 

ZOLA,  E.  (1840-1902),  299,  393,  396, 
407,  409, 423,  432,  445,  446-457, 490. 


MODERN   GERMAN   LITERATURE. 

BY  BENJAMIN   W.  WELLS,  PH.D. 

Dr.  WELLS  is  a  scientific  student  of  his  subject ;  yet  he  can  put 
himself  in  the  place  of  the  general  reader  and  feel  a  thoroughly 
genuine  sympathy  with  that  point  of  view.  More  than  this  book 
contains  of  the  history  of  German  literature,  as  Dr.  Wells  has  said, 
the  man  of  general  culture  need  not  know  ;  but  less  than  it  contains 
he  will  hereafter  be  answerable  for  not  knowing,  now  that  so  judi- 
cious and  genial  a  guide  stands  ready  to  impart  it  to  him.  —  Bookman. 

Dr.  Wells  brings  to  his  work  a  clear  vision,  sound  thought,  and 
careful  study,  and  a  love  for  the  subject  that  makes  everything 
fresh  and  refreshing.  And  he  has  one  thing  that  sets  him  apart 
from  that  army  of  writers  who  are  giving  us  essays  on  everything 
under  the  sun,  —  he  speaks  of  no  book  which  he  does  not  know  at 
first  hand.  —  Springfield  Republican. 

No  one  who  may  read  this  book  will  doubt  that  Mr.  Wells  is 
capable  of  making  the  scientific  analysis  of  which  he  speaks.  It  is 
indeed  his  scholarship  that  has  enabled  him  to  prepare  a  book, 
in*  itself  a  work  of  literary  merit,  which  brings  nearer  to  the  people 
some  of  the  master  minds  of  the  world.  —  N.  Y.  Times. 

This  book  we  regard  as  an  interesting  and  valuable  contribution 
to  our  accounts  of  German  literature.  In  the  first  place  it  has  a 
good  and  rational  point  of  view,  it  is  impartial,  free  from  German 
conceit  and  verbosity;  and  then  it  gives  much  information  in  a 
comprehensive  and  perspicuous  form.  We  are  not  acquainted  with 
any  other  book  on  this  subject  in  English  of  which  these  things 
can  be  said.  —  PMic  Opinion. 

What  we  always  prize  in  Sche'rer's  work  may  be  said  of  the 
present  volume :  it  is  very  well  written,  and  in  general  distin- 
guished by  sound  judgments.  .  .  .  We  marvel  only  at  the  skill 
that  has  produced  such  a  full,  well-ordered,  clear,  and  truly  fas- 
cinating multum  in  parvo.  —  Translation  from  Blatter  fur  litterarische 
Unterhaltung,  Leipzig. 

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